The Tale of a Hat

Frances

6 years ago

This winter, I struck up an instagram friendship with another wonderful lady in the vintage community (Eliza, aka @vintagerosegirl) over our shared love of hats. We discussed preferred styles, hats that we would buy if they weren’t so expensive, and sent each other links to excellent hats that we’d seen.

Now, Eliza had been eyeing an extremely large sun hat at a well-known shop, except that it was slightly too expensive to justify. I happened to have her address on hand from selling her one of my larger hats, and so I decided that the proper thing to do was to purchase the hat and have it delivered to her without saying a thing. The plan was hatched, executed, and would have gone off very well indeed except that she was having a bad week and decided that maybe it was time to treat herself to a nice hat purchase! I did my best to feign surprise when she sent me a very grumpy message, complete with a screenshot of the hat listing with the prominent “SOLD” label.

Of course, just a few days later she got a VERY large box with the very large hat inside. And a week later, I got a box which I was sure I hadn’t ordered. And inside? This delightful periwinkle hat, with its polka-dotted veil.

Eliza had purchased one of the hats that was on my wishlist in revenge! I was thrilled to discover that my latest hat addition actually went with many things in my closet, but I styled it for Easter (yeah, I know, I’m late with posting pictures) by removing the pale pink flower that was originally attached (only with pins, as it turned out) and replacing it with three white millinery flowers from my collection.

I admit that I wasn’t entirely sure how to wear the veil (it’s almost a yard long and only attached to the hat at one side) so I tucked it up in a loop, which I think works reasonably well.

And that is the tale of this hat! I’m very much looking forward to wearing it more, its such a fun style. And of course, whenever I wear it I think fondly of the hat escapades that brought it to me.