VICTORIAN FASHION - Victorians Loved Their Bonnets

Did You Know?... No Victorian Lady Considered Herself Fully Dressed Unless She Was Wearing A Hat. In Victorian ladies' magazines, summer was invariably described as "the season when maidens' fancies lightly turn to thoughts of bonnets."

Every year, as gardens blossomed, nature's renewal was mirrored-and often outshone-by the incredible abundance of flora and fauna that appeared on women's hats. Of course, hats were worn during every season, in every kind of weather, but if they were relatively restrained in their shapes and ornament during the colder, rainier months of theyear, there was practically no limit to their extravagance in summer.

Fantastic gardens, rivaling the flowers in country meadows and city window boxes, blossomed on "fields" of fabric or straw. Yards of ribbon were tied into bows, crushed into puffs or caught up in buckles, either plain or glittering with "brilliants." Artistically placed folds of chiffon, loops of lace and taffeta, satin swags and dashing rosettes adorned the crowns of stylish chapeaux. Bowers of fabric roses, silk poppies, velvet pansies or sprays of linen lilacs peeked coyly from beautifully shaded fabric foliage. Glossy feathers gleamed in the sun: gentle breezes ruffled the downy tips of ostrich plumes.

Whether they were custom made by a milliner, purchased at a department or general store, ordered from a mail-order catalog or purchased plain and trimmed by hand at home, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, women's hats continually evolved to complement changing silhouettes.

Even their names were altered. Originally a hat meant any kind of head covering, while a bonnet was a specific type of hat that was tied under the chin with "strings", which were actually strips of ribbon, lace or other fabric. By the end of the 19th century, the words were often used interchangeably, though "bonnet" was already beginning to take on the quaint sound it has today.

The close fitting bonnets worn during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign had flaring brims that completely concealed a woman's face in profile view, and would have looked almost as old-fashioned to the granddaughters of the women who wore them as they do to us. (Their shape lingered on in the fabric "poke bonnets" worn by farmers' wives to shield their complexions from the sun.)

As skirts grew ever wider, culminating in the crinolined grandeur of the Civil War Era, smaller bonnets with shallower brims and ruffled flounces at the back appeared. A popular exception to this general rule was the wide-brimmed straw hat with trailing ribbons that Scarlett O'Hara wears to the party at Twelve Oaks in "Gone With The Wind."

The dramatic, bustled fashions of the late 1870's and 80's were balanced by hats that were modes in size, although usually heavily trimmed with fabric, feathers, flowers, and lace. Some hats resembled upturned flower pots, others were made to be worn off the face to reveal the curly bangs popularized by the Prince of Wales' wife, Princess Alexandra, and the other beauties of the era.

In the 1890's, when enormous puffed sleeves and hourglass shapeswere all the rage, modish misses wore straw "boaters" with flat crowns and brims, sometimes accented with flowers by the bunch.Dressier hats were trimmed with aigrettes (feathers or flowers,placed vertically to stand up straight).

As the Victorian era drew to a close, tie-on bonnets were strictly for elderly ladies, like the Queen, who preferred to cling to the fashions of their youth. Younger, more stylish women topped their raffish bicycling outfits with a tam-o'-shanter or rakish cap. On dressier occasions, they perched magnificently ribboned and plumed creations atop their Gibson Girl upsweeps, holding their hats in place with long, wicked-looking hatpins.

In the years of Queen Victoria's reign, a great deal more changed thanthe shape and style of fashionable chapeaux. As the era that boreher name drew to a close, hats were still an indispensable part of every day fashion, and they would remain so during the Edwardian era and throughout the years of World War I. Underneath all those charming confections, however, women's heads were full of revolutionary new notions about their rights and obligations, from career opportunities to the vote. In addition to all the usual decorations, there were "bees" in those early 20th century summer bonnets - ideas that would eventuallytransform the world forever.

Written By: Nancy Britton This Article Originally appeared in VICTORIAN DECORATING MAGAZINE, August 2003 Issue.

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