Those Awful Hats: The Head-Toppers of Victorian Ladies

     First of all, let's address the title of this post: "Those Awful Hats". It comes from a 1909 D.W. Griffith short, dealing with a theatre audience who becomes continually annoyed at women's increasingly large hats.
     Strangely enough, this whimsical short, while obviously taking comedic liberties, isn't too far from the truth in some aspects. Take a gander at some of these real Victorian and Edwardian hats:

Now, keep in mind, these hats came in towards the end of the fad, in 1913-15. Let's look at some older hats:

Some wild ones, right?
And notice all of the feathers?
     Well, some women took this to an extreme, and mounted dead birds on their hats! So many were used in hats, in fact, that an act was eventually passed to prevent the slaughtering of the birds for the millinery. Talk about suffering for fashion, and I don't mean the ladies!

     And as for the size, movie theaters often had to show slides stating "Ladies, Please Remove Your Hats" so the theater patrons could see, as evidenced in "Those Awful Hats".
      Eventually hats would reach their peak and then gradually fade out to the gentler styles to come. However, hatmaking still lives on throughout select members of the internet, such as Diane Siverson at Lady Diane Hats. Let's just hope they leave our avian friends out of this.

-Electric "Tip O' The Hat" Phonograph