- How did we go from
hats being a crucial part of our fashion, culture and
economy to almost non-existent in less than 50 years? (ambient music) Well, hat wearing is
now viewed as something for special events or the eccentric or just the Royal Family. What the hell happened? This is kind of nuts when
you really think about it. It's so drastic, it's so intense. What the hell happened? But more importantly, if hats
are no longer a crucial part of our dress and fashion,
then why is it that milliners and hatters are still able to own and operate successful businesses? Today, we're gonna be
doing a deep dive into why, specifically American women stopped wearing hats as a
standard fashion accessory. - Well, I didn't know that I
wanted to become a milliner, but I've been sewing since I was five and always been around
family that has sewed just kind of naturally
led me into going to fashion design school. And I always loved hats. Of course, I dressed up and
when I would do costumes I would make hats not the right way, but attempted to with
the costumes I would make and then I moved to
Chicago to pursue costumes and ended up meeting a Milliner that was talking about the traditional techniques of hat-making. And I thought, "This is so cool." And talking about this
200-year-old technique. And so, when I looked into
learning more about it back then there really wasn't a lot offered. So I ended up going to Australia. - Oh wow.
- And doing an apprenticeship and that's where the light bulb went off. And since I knew how to hand
sew it just came really natural and I thought, "This
is what I meant to do." (Jenny and Abby laugh) (ambient music) - So first things first. There's basically two main
trades that created hats that were worn by people. There was the hatter trade and then there was the millinery trade. The hatter trade is the hat trade where they would take wool, beaver fur, rabbit fur, felt capelines and they would steam them,
process them, and block them on wooden blocks. This is also the trade where
we get the term Mad Hatter. - Mercury in the felt to help stiffen it. So when you're working with
the felt and molding it over the mercury would seep into your pores and really make you mad. So, and that was only
banned in the United States in the forties, believe it or not.
- Really? - Yeah.
- Wow. - So this is an alcohol-based sizing. - And now my dear as you were saying- - The other trade is the millinery trade. Now here's what's really interesting about the millinery trade. It is actually one of the
first female-dominated trades in history in the West. The way milliners work is
they either work using straw and there were sewing machines for straw or you could hand sew straw, or they actually worked in buckram of fabric material or silk and wire. And so, the actual construction of the hat is innately different too, from hatters. Also, hatters traditionally
usually worked more with male clients, milliners worked with female clients. Hatters were male, milliners were female. - Back in the day, it just millinery was just around every corner. But it allowed people to be expressive and do things a little avant-garde without it being something you wear. And so, I think people were
scared to do things with fashion where I think they could
have been a little bit more creative with hats. I think that's kind of
where creativity started in my opinion, as far as just
doing more avant-garde things and taking risks than
going from 10 buttons to 3. - Gosh, this is so cool. It's such a look.
- Yeah. (indistinct voices) - The millinery trade and hat-wearing honestly reached its peak at the end of the Victorian era and the end of the 19th century. So the very end of the 1800s. Unlike any graph you gotta have the peak before
you have the decline, right? To me, this is a really good indication of what's coming, because the millinery trade reached its essentially peak of
power, peak of influence, and peak of negative impact that we actually have
in the United States, the creation of the Audubon Society. And the Audubon Society
was actually created in direct response to the millinery trade killing off so many births
that they were worried that these species were
going to go extinct. And from that moment on,
they start organizing and they start lobbying
and they start pushing for legislation to happen in
state and national Congresses to protect birds. New York State actually passed a law, banned the use of 43 different
bird species for feathers. This kind of blew my mind. So this is not all of 'em. This is some of 'em. Green herons, two species of night herons, the screech owl, the sky lark,
the sooty and white terns, pelicans, scarlet ibis,
buntings, bohemian waxwings, swift, magpies, snow
bunting, condor and jays. Like I knew about egrets, obviously, but I did not realize
that they were just... When you see a bird and you're just like, (intense suspenseful music) - Ugh. - Like, "Ugh." Anyways, it was a lot. And then in 1918 actually, President Wilson signed the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act that protected our migratory
birds here in North America and especially waterfowl like egrets from being hunted for feathers. (French-style folk music) But I think just this negative press that's coming right before
and during and right after World War I, it just kind of starts
to set the tone I think of what is to come. - One thing is that I
don't sketch my hats, because I can't draw
as much as I've tried. Everything's in my head, no, I don't run out of ideas. If anything, I can't keep up with them. For me, it's just working
with the material in my hands, working on these old blocks and having the energy of
people who used to work on them come through in the making of each hat and just kind of letting the
material become what it wants. I love to work with vintage trims, especially twenties and
thirties trims from France, just the delicacy and just
you can see the handwork that went into a lot of
the materials and trims that I use and be able to think that I am giving it a new space opposed to collecting mold in some warehouse basement somewhere and adding it to something modern. It's just, I love the idea
of just all these centuries coming together to be a one-of-a-kind hat. A lot of people who come to me, they understand my aesthetic. They realize that I'm
sculptural in my process. And so, they allow me to
be the artist that I am and create that way. - Sure let's do it today. - 1920s again, you might be like, "Abby, people wore hats in the 1920s." You're right, but they were cloches. And you know what? That didn't do the
millinery trade any favor. So in the 1920s as a
basically a direct result of World War I and the Spanish influenza I think we can all relate to the 1920s now in a way that we probably
honestly don't want to. But here we are. Society's completely different. Women are wearing shorter skirts. The waist has dropped, it's
much looser-fitted garments. They're chopping their
hair off in short bobs. And as a result the hats that women are
wearing are no longer what their mothers were wearing. Where the hats made by milliners like I said are wire and fabric, they're also usually perched
a top of the hairstyle and not actually meant to fit on the head. Where a cloche is actually
meant to fit on your head. It's a very tightly-fitted hat that is very close to your face. The cloche is also not
made by buckram and wire, it is actually made usually with felt. And so, that is directly taking work away from the female-dominated millinery trade and into the hands of the hatter trade. The other issue with cloches, is because they are so simple
and they are so boring, I love cloches, don't get
me wrong, I love them, but they're boring, is that they actually became
very easy to mass produce. Where hats, especially pre-1920 you couldn't mass produce those really, they were unique pieces of art that were made by milliners and artisans who were trained in that
with their own artistic eye. And it was a very
individualized experience. And it's a very individualized hat. No hat's ever exactly the same, right? Cloches you can make them the same, because it's basically the
same shape over and over again. You just change the ribbon,
you change the flower you just change them a little. So we're seeing hats go from
being custom-made by artisans into a more mass manufactured
fast fashion industry. The thing too, with cloches
and what was starting to happen is women were also starting
to go more and more just without hats in general, 'cause they had shorter
hair they would fix it, they would style it. Hats didn't feel as required
by women in society. And so, there was this
growing fear of hatlessness. - Yeah, my favorite milliner
from a long time ago, Lily Dache.
- Okay, yeah. - I have several of her hats that I just have as inspiration around. And I actually knew her
daughter who's still alive. She dabbled in hat-making as well. I own a couple of Lily Dache hat blocks. And with everything I do
here, I feel like the energy of them surround me while I'm working. And oh my gosh, just to,
I've read some amazing books by her that of just how
millinery was back then. And she had this, I think
it was nine-story building on Park Avenue. And hearing about, especially
knowing her daughter and getting personal stories from her having a bubble bath, taking a bubble bath on the
ninth floor where she lived and having a meeting with her
employees at the same time. It just always champagne and her smoking. And just to be able to
have a successful business that supports nine levels on Park Avenue. Yes, it's just awesome. (big band music) - [Narrator] In millinery, a few leaders possessed
of fertile imaginations are chiefly responsible
for the continually astounding headgear of
the American female. For an original Chapeau
dreamed up by John Fredericks well-heeled women may pay anywhere from
$35 to an occasional 750. - Now, luckily, or unluckily, well, I guess, um, gray. Thing is in 1929 we have Black Tuesday and we have the start
of the Great Depression. The stock market crashes and everything goes to
hell in a hand basket. I'm really tired of talking
about things that happened in our past that we actively
live through every day, especially as an elder millennial. (TV beep) Well, the twenties kind
of sucked for millinery. The 1930s, it was actually pretty good. So the 1930s, we're seeing
this little uptick in millinery we're seeing this mild resurgence happen in part because of actually
the Great Depression, because it became cheaper
to change your hat than it would be to
change your entire outfit and buy new clothes. So women were spending a
little bit more money on hats to create updated styles, their dresses without having to actually
create an entirely new outfit. Also, as a direct response to the cloche this explosion of extremely avant-garde, creative and interesting hat styles. They were really tiny hats,
you have fruit on your head, extremely artistic, it's
extremely interesting. And it all actually kicked off with the Eugenie hat, basically 1931. And this hat's actually,
when you look at it it is like the iconic 1930-style hat. (music hall-style music) - [Narrator] Yes, Rallo, yes Euthemia. These are the things that your
dear, dear, great-grand mama and her mama used to wear
on their pretty head. What Rallo? You think they're terrible? Well, so do I. I'll except that one in the middle. - This is all for adults. Kids and teenagers, adolescents, what I was just telling
you guys had no effect on them whatsoever. There is a lot of discourse around the fact that
teenagers are not wearing hats in the 1930s and forties. There's a lot of concern by the millinery industry about
teenagers not wearing hats. And the thing is, is you can see this. If you watch media from
the 1930s and forties you actually see this. You don't see kids wearing hats, you don't see teenage girls
wearing hats, not like before. Now I, and when I say
they're not wearing hats I don't mean that they're
not wearing berets or tans or winter headgear to keep your head warm. What I'm talking about is they're not wearing
necessarily the Eugenie hat. That's adult women. That's the older generation. The kids, the teenagers, they're not, they're not interested in wearing hats. They don't wanna look like they're a mom they don't wanna look
like they're grandma. That's what's happening. And the thing is, is when
you're a kid or a teenager in the thirties and forties, that means you are an adult in
the fifties and the sixties. And when you think of adults
in the 1950s, not old adults, but people in their twenties,
do you think of them in hats? Does Marilyn Monroe wear a hat? - Sorry about the accident- - Somebody should question you- - So what happened is the
teenagers, the hatless teenagers of the 1930s and forties
became the hatless adults of the 1950s and sixties. Now looking back on it we think, "Oh hey, no, that
they absolutely wore hats." But that's because hats are still required in certain levels of formality. - Hats can transform a person. I love when I make a hat
for someone who started out telling me they don't look good in hats or they need to wear a hat, because they're going to Derby and they don't think they
look good in anything. Working with them and, because I can look at
someone's physique, hair length and all that and know what style and shapes
would look best on them, but to make something
that we worked on together and then to have them put
it on and it changes them. They stand a little taller,
they smile a little bigger and it gives 'em that confidence that what they didn't
realize was deep inside them. So, that's what I love about millinery is seeing something that was there but was hidden coming back out. I've had customers tell me that
they would wear my hats out and they felt invisible for years and that how many compliments they
got going out to dinner. And that's why I do what I do is to make people feel beautiful. (light-hearted music) - Hats are still required in
certain levels of formality. They were worn to church. The Vatican too happened
in the 1960s and seventies and that's when the regulations for women covering their head in the Catholic church were taken away. And women no longer had to do that. But up until that point,
you did have to wear a hat. Or if you are just going
to a Protestant church for Easter Sunday, or
just covering your head in church in general was
a part of the culture. (big band music) - [Narrator] Spring is in
the air, a heady prospect, and from heads it's a
natural step to hats. The Easter bonnet is
tops in the ladies' mind as we pass from dourer
winter into a cheerier climb or a preview of the chapeau stylings and have the uppermost this season, we visit the Spanish monastery
garden outside Miami, where a chic quintet
model a sequence of hats by the nation's leading milliners. - And so, we're seeing
people not go to church as much as they used to. We're seeing church regulations change. So women were no longer
required to cover their head. We are seeing the rise of hair products and hair styling, because
of the 1950s and sixties. (jolly music) - [Narrator] Many women
average two hours a week in a beauty salon. - We're also seeing
bigger hair, curly hair and the bouffant of the 1960s. Can you imagine a beehive
covered up in a hat? No. Women were going and
getting their hair set. I mean, all of us with grandmas, remember they would go and get
their hair set once a week. And when women didn't want
to go and get their hair set to then immediately crush it
with a hat the following day, they wanted to try and maintain that set for as long as possible. Hats became less important and women just started to leave them off. And also the fashion leaders, like I said who were teenagers of
the thirties and forties are the fashion leaders
of the fifties and sixties and they were not wearing hats. So Jackie Kennedy actually
does take the blame for the lack of hat wearing. Her and her husband, John F. Kennedy, they were very young when
he was sworn into office and they were not
interested in wearing hats, either one of them. Jackie Kennedy got married in 1953, her going away outfit, social etiquette decreed that she should wear a hat. But she hated hats so much that she actually carried
the hat in her hands instead of wearing it on her head. So that way she wasn't really breaking social etiquette rules, but
she didn't wanna wear the hat. And when we think of Jackie Kennedy, we think of the pillbox, but
we also think of her hair. And that was actually
very strategically done. So the millinery union
actually was a huge supporter of John F Kennedy's campaign. They donated a lot of
money to his campaign. And so, Jackie actually understood that even though she didn't like hats, she still had to wear hats. And so, that's why she started
wearing the pillbox hat that Halston would create, who would later go on to become a very famous fashion designer. But her hairstylist and
hairdresser Kenneth, actually would create these hairdos that were very full and
round and wavy in the front. And then she strategically wore the hat on the back of her head
so that way the hair was still the central
focus of her outfits. And she still had the hat on for basically political reasons. When I was actually looking
for images for this video I came across the spread from Vogue 1961. In the upper left-hand corner you'll see a Halston pillbox hat. Now notice how this is actually worn on the front of the head over the forehead and that all of these hats
are actually worn forward. This really helps further
emphasize the difference between the original intent of the hat and how Jackie actually
set a completely new style with how she actually wore these hats. Now all of this mixed together also brings up the point
that in the 1950s and sixties we see the explosion of youth culture and we also see the explosion
of a more casual culture. Everything just changed so
quickly in these few years. But also how we lived our lives changed. It's extremely difficult take it from me, to travel with hats and what are we seeing in
the fifties and sixties? We're seeing an explosion
of airplane travel. It is hard to put hats on an airplane. Cars are changing and how
do you wear a hat in a car? You can't wear a big hat in a car. It doesn't fit. Even in those big ass cars of the twenties, thirties,
forties, fifties and sixties you still couldn't wear huge hats. With technology and culture
shifts it makes sense and it sucks, frankly. It sucks to know that a
trade that was so important for women's autonomy,
financial independence, basically got gutted within a 30-year time-span. It sucks, but with that being said somehow it hasn't completely died out. - Hats are just becoming
more and more popular. And I'm noticing this year in particular there's this big fedora wool fad and I'm blaming it on Instagram. - [Abby] Blaming or thanking Instagram? - Well, both. Because there are lots of videos, which I think are great,
don't get me wrong, of people who have a
fedora, a wolf fedora, and then they set it on fire
or they add stitches to it or cut it up and paint
it, whatever the case is. So we've been inundated with people who want to make hats like that. Taught a wool class not that long ago. A couple of the people in the
class brought up these videos and I think they were surprised that the class actually
entailed them making this hat and not just having fun with it. But I mean, I have emails right now from people who wanna
learn that stuff and so- - [Abby] They want to learn
how to set the hat on fire? - Yes, but at Judith then we
sell fedoras already made. So there you go. Buy a hat already made if you don't wanna do that part and- - [Abby] Then you can set it on fire. - Yeah, then set it on fire. - When we went to Judith Millinery Supply, what I saw was a very busy shop that mostly online sales, but they had a bunch of product, they had a bunch of
stuff, they had employees and they were busy. Have you noticed if there's
more people interested in learning the millinery trade from you? - Yes, because I used to do
a lot more private workshops and I still do that. But I'm noticing my group
workshops are really expanding and I'm now teaching group
workshops at other locations not just here at Judith M. People will bring me to hotels and I'll do some a group there or work the metal store down the street and teach to large groups. - And with that my friends I do hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, go ahead
and give it a thumbs up. And if you have not subscribed
to my channel already, go ahead... (dogs bark) All right, we're done, bye. You know Gerald. (TV beep) Funny story. I actually dated this guy once and it was in 2016 during
the peak black felt hat craze like things, that summer and somewhere at a bar and this little girl walked
in and she had a hat on. Now listen, this guy knew what I did. He knew that I was into fashion history. He knew that I sewed up clothes he knew that I had a book coming out, he knew that this is what I did, was weird fashion stuff. Literally in my bubble profile I had a picture of me in
an oldie, tiny outfit. So that way they all knew
what they were getting into if they swiped right, right? And he looked at that woman and he was like, "What is she wearing?" Oh my god. And I just looked at him and I was just like, "Are
you for real, my dear?" That was our last date, because I was like, I'm not gonna be with someone who freaks the fuck out over a woman
wearing a black hat. That ain't it? You can't handle me. So if you can't handle
that, you can't handle me. So even though I've been
fairly normy around you, no, no, no, we're done here. Hell, I think I wore a black
hat on a date once with him. I don't know, anyways (upbeat funky music)
