Hat from Spring 2011 Dior Collection
“I think that in town you cannot be really dressed without a hat. It is really the completion of your outfit and in another way, it is very often the best way to show your personality. It is easier to express yourself sometimes with your hat than it is with your clothes. Hats are important!
A hat can make you look gay, serious, dignified, happy – or sometimes ugly if you don’t choose it well! A hat is the quintessence of femininity with all the frivolity this word contains!
Women would be very silly not to take advantage of such an efficient weapon of coquetry.
And with hats it is the same as with handbags and your clothes – always select the best possible materials.
In the winter velvet and good quality felts are lovely and very versatile and you can get wonderful, rich colors in those materials.
Fur is lovely, too – and besides being warm a little fur hat is very feminine. If you cannot afford a fur coat but yearn for a little something fur for cold days, then, by all means, have a fur hat!
The line of a hat is just as important, too, as the line of your frock. Too many hats are just “shapes” cluttered up with numerous decorations in the form os feathers or flowers. If a hat has a good line it will still be attractive without any trimmings as all.
Equally when you have a hat with a good line don’t clutter it up with a bunch of flowers you suddenly have a whim to wear!
For summer, little silk or straw hats are very nice – and I purposely say “little” because they are much more convenient to have than big ones. You quickly tire of having hats with enormous brims and except on very still summer days they are difficult to wear elegantly – you do not always want to be holding onto the brim!
Of course on the right day and for the right occasion – like a garden party – nothing is nicer or more provocative than a really big hat, sometimes covered with a profusion of flowers.
For sport or in the country, I do not very much like hats – unless rain wind or strong sun draws them back to their original use which is to cover the head.” From the entry on Hats in Christian Dior’s Little Dictionary of Fashion published by Abrams in 1951
As Lady Violette I am delighted to see that Christian Dior used the term important hats! And that he says a hat is one of the best ways to show your personality. And he goes on to say that hats are the quintessence of femininity and are such an efficient weapon of coquetry!
A Charmingly Veiled Cocktail Hat - Spring 2011 Dior Collection
The hats pictured are by John Gallianos for Dior 2011 Spring – just before his firing! Too bad! He was and still is a brilliant designer!
See my next post for a Dior hat in an ensemble designed by the master himself.
