A Brief for the Hat

I entered the crowded railway car and walked slowly up the aisle, examining people’s backs to see which looked most inviting as a seat-mate. Ah! Slim pretty shoulders, and a head beautifully poised! I paused: — ‘Is this seat taken ?’

‘No, indeed,’ a sweet voice answered. ‘Oh! How do you do? Is n’t this pleasant?’

Pleasant indeed. I sat down happily, and as I turned to look in my friend’s face I had an added thrill of pleasure. There was something a-little-morethan-usual about it. I considered — Yes! the hat! It had a little pinch in the brim, just in front, making a sort of gable-end, below which the face looked out at me with added piquancy. Silly idea — that pinch! Yet I was grateful to it for something it did to the always lovely face beneath it.

The incident set me thinking. I have always been one to scoff at the vagaries of fashion. They have all seemed about equally absurd to me. But now I am growing more tolerant, especially in regard to hats. I am, in fact, evolving a philosophy of hats.

It is based on a fundamental and familiar trait of human nature. What we sec constantly we cease to see vividly. The faces we notice least are those we know — and perhaps really love — best; our eyes are a bit jaded by following the familiar lines. The same is true of pure color. Water and sky are beautiful, and you may suppose that you are duly appreciative of them; but lie on the deck of a cat-boat and look at them with your head in an unaccustomed position — sideways or upside down — and note how the colors flare out upon your vision. Or stay indoors for a few weeks, in a room where you do not get much outlook, and then go out. You will be blinded by the glory of the world. But not for long. The glory, alas, fades quickly, and habit settles upon you once more.

With our friends’ faces somewhat the same thing happens. When we first meet them they pique us pleasantly with their unfamiliar line and color. Gradually we grow wonted to them. The first vision has passed. What then ? Must we turn upside down to look at them? Or perhaps turn them upside down? Or mew ourselves up — socially speaking — in dim back bedrooms, in order to regain that coveted first impression?

Not at all. Fashion has found a way. It claps a new hat on our friend’s head — a hat with a funny nip in it, or a queer wiggle of the brim, or a long, soft droop, or a dashing tilt, or a jaunty upfling, or any kind of line whatever, that has distinctive meaning and is not the kind of line we have been used to.

What happens ? First of all, we are interested, our eyes are challenged anew. Then the interest and the challenge give us a fresh interpretation. We see the familiar face as though it were a stranger’s, and we find in it things we have never noticed. The funny pinch in the brim may bring out all its gayety, the Jong, soft droop may accentuate its pathos, the jaunty up-fling of the side may give it a sudden brave note. I have seen a pretty, refined New England face turned suddenly, by a sweep of brim and a green feather, into the face — pretty and refined still — of one who breaks bonds, blood-sister to Robin Hood.

Passing strange, this witchery of line! Not always working altogether for good. For if there are hats that we ‘like’ on our friends, there are also hats that we ‘don’t like.’ Naturally. Since a line can evoke good points, it can also evoke bad ones, and the wrong line may accentuate in a face, not its bravery but its coarseness, not its prettiness but its pettiness, not its pathos but its heaviness.

Yet even with this danger, one must welcome the change, merely as change. For the rest of us, from the neck down, fashion provides some possibility of this change that we seem so to need. The waist-line may be ‘worn high’ one year, and ’low ’ the next. Now and then it may even chance — I noted this carefully in a good journal a while ago — that the waist-line will for a short season be ‘at the waist.’ Shoulders and hips may be made to seem broader or narrower, neck shorter or longer, by means best known to those who use them. But features cannot be so easily manipulated. At least, if they can, the methods are not, on the whole, regarded as altogether desirable or reputable. Fashion does not quite dare say, ‘ Noses are this winter being worn retrousse, but next spring the tips will drop a little, and by summer there is a chance that the aquiline line will come in again.’ Or, ‘Eyes are to be large and round this fall, but smaller and narrower toward winter.’ Or, ’Lips are fuller than they were in July, while chins promise to be longer and upper lips shorter than for several years.’

No, this is not yet done. But instead, a way has been found to get some of the same effects of change. By its means faces seem longer or shorter, noses appear to raise or lower their little tips, eyes seem to grow large or small, slanting or straight, and all by the magic of a line, a shift of mass, a flare of color. The hat! The hat’s the thing!