Hillsdale students put hats on walls, in boxes and on heads
Headware collections recall old fashion trends and exotic locales
Mary Petrides
Issue date: 11/12/09 Section: Focus
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Avery said it started when he received an e-mail from Harwood over the summer.
"He's like: 'This should be the year of hats,'" Avery said. "And I said: 'All right. Let's bring hats.'"
The two have about 10 hanging on their wall.
"They are all kinds of hats," Avery said.
Avery and Harwood have hats with brims and hats without brims, hats from the U.S. and hats from overseas. Harwood added a Portuguese hat to the collection.
"[It's] just something you would never wear in public, but it's from Portugal, so it's real," Avery said.
Avery picked it up - medium-sized, khaki canvas with a teal-trimmed brim and ties underneath - and said he once wore it as part of a "home school dad" Halloween costume.
He said another hat - a woman's floppy hat - purchased for $1 at Wal-Mart reappeared with a price tag of $10.
"Maybe we created a sensation," Avery said. "That hat carries a lot of sentimental value."
Avery said they have a friend, an anonymous junior, who won't be seen with them while they wear their hats
"I think she was genuinely embarrassed," he said.
Vintage hat collector Sophomore Abbie Maynard pulled a blue flowered hat box from the closet in her Whitley Residence room.
"When I tell people who my roommate is, I say 'Abbie,' and they say 'who's that?'" sophomore Lauren Moroder said. "I say 'She's the one with all the hats.'"
Maynard said most of her hats are from the 1940s and 50s. Two of her hats have brims so large they won't fit in her hat box, and she can't fit all of her smaller hats in the box. She filled her hat box, and then put one large hat on her head when she flew to Hillsdale. She left the rest at home.
"I only have room on my head for one extra hat that won't fit in the box," she said.
One of her hats, white with a glittery embellishment, belonged to her great-grandmother Glenna Glenn.
Glenn worked for Meier & Frank, now Macy's, as a ready-to-wear buyer. She would travel to New York and decide which clothing the store would sell during the season, Maynard said.
"She was a very fashionable lady," she added.
Maynard purchased another hat, one with a mink brim, from "this wonderful woman named Alexandra," she said. Alexandra owns a hat shop near Portland, Ore., where Maynard lives.
"She's very gaudy and always wears fake eyelashes and bright red lipstick," Maynard said. "She rides a pink bicycle with tassels."
Maynard said before people began washing their hair regularly, they would wear hats every time they went out as a way of looking neat. Now, people wash their hair and don't need hats as they used to.
"Hats are a lost article of clothing," she said. "We just don't wear them anymore."
Maynard still wears them, though.
"I guess I just love to put things on my head," she said. "They're lovely."
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