Helena Sheffield - The Art of Wearing Hats - What to choose. Where to find. How to style.

HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.ukFirst published by HarperCollins Publishers 2016 FIRST EDITION © Helena Sheffield 2016 Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016 Illustrations © Sian Tezel 2016 A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Helena Sheffield asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/greenSource ISBN 9780008165291 Ebook Edition © February 2016 ISBN: 9780008165369 Version: 2015-12-17

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

How to Use This Book

A Brief History of Hats

No.1: Hats to Wear Every Day

The Trilby

The Bowler

The Cloche

GET THE LOOK: The 1920s

The Boater

The Military Cap

The Pork Pie

Wide-brimmed Hats

No.2: Hats to Wear in the Wild

The Beret

GET THE LOOK: THE 1930s

The Beanie

The Riding Hat

The Deerstalker

The Flat Cap

The Fedora

GET THE LOOK: The 1940s

The Cossack

The Trapper

No.3: Hats to Wear to the Palace

Hatinators

The Top Hat

The Pillbox Hat

Hats with Feathers

Hats with a Veil

The Turban

GET THE LOOK: The 1950s

No.4: Tricks of the Trade

Your First Hat

Building Your Confidence

GET THE LOOK: The 1960s

How to Avoid Hat-hair

The Ponytail Problem

What to Wear in the Wind

Spring vs Autumn

Hatcessories

Hatiquette

Popular Hat Terms

No.5: Final Notes

Glossary

Recommended Hat Shops

List of Searchable Terms by Season

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

The hat is back. Not with a bang or a grandiose flourish, but with a growing murmur as it gathers a dedicated following. It’s cropping up more and more frequently: from weddings and walks, to festivals, holidays and quick nips to the shops, people are rediscovering the trilby and the turban, the pillbox and the pork pie. It’s a quietly quirky fashion revolution.

Do you want to know a secret? The hat never left. While it’s been fading from common use over the past few decades, every now and then someone rediscovers it. Look at Kate Middleton, Cara Delevingne, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell Williams: all lauded for their pioneering hattitude, and all inspiring more and more people to don a hat.

This book is an ode to you – to the person who sees the power of a good hat, whether they wear one or not. If you’re already a hat enthusiast, delve into these pages for ideas to further refine your unique look. If you’re afflicted by The Fear, believing that hats don’t suit you, ask yourself why that is – it’s possible that you simply haven’t found the right one yet.

Catwalking some of the best, most versatile hats around, this book offers advice on how and when to wear them, what with and where to, and lists a variety of shops to buy them from. It suggests which hats suit different face shapes and head sizes, and gives tips and tricks for making the most of each hat. It provides stories from the history of different hats (you might be surprised by some), and will point you in the direction of becoming the hat-wearer you were always born to be.

Wearing a hat doesn’t actually take anything more than confidence, but understanding the true magic of hats – and how they can transform the wearer into a mysterious stranger – can’t always be learnt alone. Using this book will help you uncover their secrets, master them and work out how to wear hats every day.

The list of contents and index in this book can help you determine exactly what kind of hat you’re looking for, with the contents organising them by occasion and the index by season.

Once you’ve decided on a hat of interest, you can find more information on its origin, anecdotes from its history and a list of specific suggestions and ideas for finding and wearing it under the following headings:

WEAR ITWhen to wear the hat – occasions, weather and season.

OWN ITWhat face shapes, head sizes or hair styles can really own the hat.

STYLE ITWhat to wear it with.

FIND ITWhere’s best to buy one.

PERFECT ITTop tips and tricks for wearing the hat.

STYLE GURUWhich celebrities wear this hat best and why, giving you all the hat-spiration you’ll ever need.

This book is a guide to help you along the path of discovering hats, to encourage you to create your own style and to become an inspiration to the rest of us.

While there are considerably more hats designed for women, this book also provides pointers for those fashion-savvy men who really know how to dress. Many of the hats listed here can – and should! – be adopted by both sexes.

Once you properly start wearing hats, it naturally follows that you’ll become an icon. (I know, it’s a hard life.) There are burdens that come with such responsibility, and the final section of this book covers common issues faced by hat-wearers today, with a few simple solutions. By dipping in and out of these pages you will become a fully fledged hat-wearer, who commands respect and answers to no one.

3,300 BC –The earliest known version of a hat is preserved alongside its owner in the ice of a mountain on the border of Austria and Italy, proving that even in the Bronze Age people knew how to dress. Or just keep their heads warm.

3,200 BC –Tomb paintings depict Egyptian men wearing conical straw hats or headdresses.

AD 800 –St Clement, English patron saint of hat-makers, accidentally discovers felt. You could say that this occurrence ranks alongside similar accidental discoveries, such as penicillin and the Slinky.

1571 –An Act of Parliament is passed decreeing that people over the age of six must wear a hat on Sundays. Of course, this only applies to the ‘commoners’.

1597 –The above law is revoked for being far too ridiculous.