Alexandra Blach
Theatre Arts: Production & Design, Costume Concentration
With an interest in fashion, clothing, and sewing from a young age, I knew I wanted to develop my passion in this field. After working at Texas Shakespeare Festival, I realized I enjoyed learning the history of clothes, where they originate, and how aspects are adapted in clothes today. Although I am not designing costumes for a stage, I find that researching and creating historical garments uses creativity in a different way.
After interning for a year at Helen Uffner’s Vintage Clothing, Helen’s collection inspired me to conduct my own research into cross-century hats. My extensive research into different types of hats ranged from Victorian to the present, while also giving background history on each era. The end result became, Hats Through the Ages, a 300-page reference book with hat sketches, images, and information about each era’s prominent milliners. I have shared excerpts from the chapters on Women's Victorian Hats and Men's Hat History.
My sewing project for this year was tailoring a 1970s men’s suit jacket, which took about two months to construct. During that time, my hand and machine sewing skills were refined through precise hand and pad stitching. This process gave me appreciation for those who work with such meticulous sewing everyday.
Women's Victorian Hats (1837-1901)
During Queen Victoria’s reign, an industrial age of new inventions blossomed around the world. With the invention of mass-producing factories, stores could sell multiples of the exact same product. In the fashion world, sewing machines mass- produced clothing to be more accessible to all populations. Queen Victoria was idolized as a fashion trendsetter. The well-known tradition of a white wedding dress began when she wore a white dress at her wedding to Prince Albert.
The Victorian period had the highest expectations of formal dress to express elegance and class. Dresses were full and highly decorated with trim or fabric accents. In the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, skirts were fuller, tiered, padded, and shaped with corsets and layered with petticoats. Parasols become a daily necessity to protect a woman’s delicate skin from the sun’s harmful rays. During the Mid-Victorian era, skirts were still achieving fuller silhouettes, but the invention of the hoop skirt reduced the weight of multiple petticoats. Skirts began to have fuller backs and flatter fronts. Toward the end of the Victorian era, all the skirt fullness was to the back and was held full by the bustle.
Although the Victorian era spanned many years, there are distinguishing features to identify the hats. Early Victorian hats have a small brim or none at all, since parasols were used to block the sun. As a result, hats became smaller and more decorative with feathers and flowers. Women changed their hair during the Mid-Victorian Era to hang down. Hats no longer needed to cover the whole head, so they continued to be small in size. Hats were then adorned with lace, flowers, and bows. Towards the end of the century, hats were made in a variety of shapes and sizes to become conversational pieces. An illustration of this was the highly decorative under brims. Hats during these years were worn on the top of a lady’s head but slanted sideways. A common name for highly decorated floral hats were “flower gardens” because these hats were said to host actual flowers. Violets were the most popular floral decoration due to their vibrant color.
Hats were as precious as one’s dress, so in order to keep up with changing fashion trends, hats were shaped as a simple base on a wooden hat block, and then could then be decorated and adorned with trimmings. Materials commonly used were lace, linen, straw, silk, cotton, felt, and fur. Milliners would often combine these materials, just as milliner Betsy Metcalf did in Providence, Rhode Island. She was one of the first documented milliners in the United States. Growing up on an oat farm taught her different ways to use the fiber, and she invented a way to split oat straw and blend it with fine lace and silk.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on their Wedding Day
A Betsy Metcalf Straw Bonnet
Many people believed that if a woman did not wear a hat outside to protect herself from the elements, it would ruin her beauty complexion.
Many people believed that if a woman did not wear a hat outside to protect herself from the elements, it would ruin her beauty complexion.
Men's Hat History (1880-2010)
Men’s hats have been used as protection from the sun since the first large leaf hat was invented. More hats were invented throughout the years for different purposes and formalities, but men’s hats were not as extravagant as women’s hats. During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the most common hat to wear was a top hat. Top hats were seen as the standard during these eras up until World War II, and they were usually worn with formal attire. In their earlier history, the brims of top hats were curved and long, and they were known as sugar loaf hats. As time went on, the brim became shorter, straighter, and stiffer to create the distinguished shape of the top hat.
Another well-known stiff hat was the bowler hat, which was first invented to be worn as protective and durable headgear for hunters while on horseback. Soon after, bowlers were worn by middle to upper class men who were commonly associated with business and finance. Similarly, the homburg was originally used as hunting headgear in Germany. In the 1890s, Prince Edward VII popularized the homburg to be less formal than the top hat. Straw sennit boater hats followed a similar semi-formal use as homburgs. Sennit is a specific weaving technique that adds geometric or picturesque designs to the woven object. Originally worn at sea, in later years, boaters were found in everyday fashion. The bowler, homburg, and boater could all be worn with blazers or lounging suits as less formal attire. These hats were popular until the 1960s when hats fell out of style.
Fedoras, which are often mistaken for homburgs, is the most iconic hats to see a resurgence in its style. Fedoras started to become a staple item for all men to wear in 1891. They are made out of soft wool, so there is not much structure to the hat. People were then able to construct, fold, and roll the hat whichever way they wanted. A hat that gets mistaken for a fedora is the trilby hat because it looks like a smaller version of the fedora. The trilby was adapted from George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby. Since then, it has had bursts of popularity. Similar to the shape of a fedora, the straw panama hat was a popular summer hat. Panama hats, which date back to the mid 1600s, have an Ecuadorian origin.
First worn by women in the 1830s, the pork pie hat became widespread for men at the turn of the 20th century. This hat received its name by its resemblance to the popular English meat pie pastry with layered ham. A pork pie hat can be made with any material or style of brim as long as a crease is around the crown. Pork pie hats are seen in the present as icons for some celebrities. The flat cap, which is also worn today, is the same common casual hat as it was previously. There are many different types of flat caps, such as the newsboy cap, but all these hats have the same basic rounded soft cap. Derived from the flat cap, the newsboy cap was worn during the 1930s as a lower class hat. It is most notably known for being worn in photographs of young paperboys during the Great Depression.
Predecessor of the Top Hat, the Sugar Loaf
English Pork Pies
Other casual men’s hats were the bucket hat, baseball cap, and beanie. The bucket hat was first seen in Ireland and was worn by fisherman and farmers to protect them from the rain. The famous bucket shape became widespread and was considered popular fashion during the 1980s. Baseball caps have been an iconic American hat since the first ever baseball game in 1849. Since then, this cap has gone viral, especially in the 1990s. Every person owned at least one. Baseball caps inspired beanies with the shape and silhouette, however it does not have a brim. Knit beanies are popular even today since it is a casual versatile cap that comes with many different decoration and colors.
Around the 1960s, wearing a hat was no longer an everyday social standard. Hats similar to the bowler and homburg fell out of style. However, other hats were revived and still worn in the present day, such as the baseball cap and fedora. Since hats were no longer a social requirement, hats were used to accent specific styles, and some even became statement pieces in the 1980s. Hats, in current times, have become a fun accessory to add to different styles.
Ben Sanders's wearing a Baseball Cap
Doffing, or removing the hat as a gesture, was a sign of respect and humility. It was often seen as gracious and elegant behavior for a gentleman.
Stetson and Pilgrim brands were the most popular men’s hat manufacturing companies during the 20th century. This picture of Winston Churchill wearing a homburg was taken in 1939.
Beaver fur was the most common material to make a top hat. Since beavers were hunted for their fur, during the late 19th century and early 20th century, beavers became an endangered species.
Doffing, or removing the hat as a gesture, was a sign of respect and humility. It was often seen as gracious and elegant behavior for a gentleman.
1970s Men's Suit Jacket
Men's Suit Profile Pictures
Tailoring a suit jacket requires delicate and precise hand work in the stitching and cutting. I constructed a classic 1970s men's suit jacket. The fabric is a light gray wool blend with gold emblem buttons. This jacket has two front piping pockets, a welt pocket, one back vent, and army green lining. Wide pointed lapels are attributes of a classic 1970s suit.
The process of sewing a suit jacket takes many steps and requires different internal elements. For example, the padding on the canvas, French collar and melton on the collar, shoulder pads, pocketing reinforcements, and the twill tape outlining the front. Many of these components were pad stitched, which is a hand stitching technique that allows the fabric to adjust in place.
Men's Suit Process Pictures