PP confessed to a weakness for vintage hats. For the past ten years she paid $300 a month to store her collection of 1950s hats. She sent me a picture of a cross between lime green and avocado, a cloche hat with a gold silk band. The interior is marked for Mousse HB, France. Famous milliner of the 1930-1960s, G. Howard Hodge (1893-1966) designed this one.
Mousse HB manufactured designs for many famous milliners, including Schiaparelli. I believe PP’s is likely from the late 1950s. Similar one by Mousse HB are listed for sale online from the late 1950s-1960s. She purchased this hat in its original hatbox in pink with the name of the designer on the lid and the name “Marshall Field’s, Chicago.” PP says she bought this green hat twenty years ago at a yard sale in Evanston.
I love Hodge’s hats
Hodge achieved fame in the 1950s along with fellow designers Mr. John, Svend, John Frederic, and all great 1950s designers. Hodge, though, became the most prolific, designing for the Millinery Creators Group. This band of hat-making brothers designed ‘ready to wear’ hats based on good quality materials. These materials included raffia, furry felt (like PP’s hat), straw, artificial flowers, artificial fruit, taffeta, or lace. Some hats came trimmed with anything from ribbons to rhinestones.
PP’s hat is made of a unique, lightweight fabric, a felt made from rabbit hair. The inside of the hat is pure felt and somebody brushed the outside to give the look of marvelous green-colored fur.
What happened to hats?
From the 14th century till the 1960s woman wore hats. I regret the loss, for the sake of a bad hair day, also for the chance to complete a total outfit. PP writes about her reputation for always wearing a vintage hat from her collection at weddings and funerals.
PP wonders about this hat’s original purchased. She remembers Hodge’s hats advertised at Chicago stores such as Goldblatt’s, Lords in downtown Evanston, Edgar A. Stevens in Highland Park, and Hats by Sue in Irving Park. Lytton’s Chapeaux Boutique on State Street in downtown Chicago carried Hodge’s hats. Gone are the days of local hat shops. Big department stores once featured a whole floor of them, such as those at Marshall Field’s and Sears.
Why did 1950s hat designers find success?
Target marketing! Full page seasonal advertisements in a newspaper’s home and recipe section caught the attention of women. A woman found Easter hat advertisements beginning in March, and Christmas hats in September, and summer hats with wide brims in May.
PP found old copies of her hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, and studied the fashions they advertised over a season (1956). She lusts after a late 1950s red hat with dingle cherries made of felt in red on the crest, perching on a knob at the top of the hat. The Chicago Tribune’s article, the “Mode of the Day” says for Spring, cherries on hats will be the RAGE.
Marshall Field’s advertised a cherry hat on March 8, 1956, for $29.99. A full-page ad showed cherries on various hats selling for $19.95 to $69.50, an expensive hat considering a house cost $20K in 1956! Flip the page and The Chicago Tribune shows a cherry hat from Sears, the cheaper department store, selling for $3.99. Flip again and Marshall Field’s special advertising column, called “The Fair,” shows drawings and photos of models wearing the season’s great hat designers: John Frederic, Vincent deKoven, Leslie James, Schiaparelli, Suzy Lee, Agnes, G. Howard Hodge, Adrienne, and John Andrews, and Russ Russell.
Hats as big business
As Spring was the season to sell hats, The Chicago Tribune in March published an advertisement of a fashion show of hats designed by the Parisian-trained Svend, a student Jacques Fath. Fath designed in his native Denmark and Sweden. Svend came to Chicago to show his hats at Marshall Field’s on March 13, 1956. A ticket to see Svend and his hats at the ‘Walnut Room’ at the State Street Marshall Field’s cost $1.50. Also advertised, we see Svend appeared with his hats at the Sheraton Blackstone with his models, in a command runway show for 250 Chicago women.
The hat by G. Howard Hodge is worth $75 but I’d pay more!