How to Store Vintage Hats

Today we are talking about one of my favorite topics- vintage hats! Here are some great tips for storing your vintage hat collection.

How to Wear Hats

I just adore hats. And I get a lot of comments for people that go along the lines of "I could never pull off a hat" or "I have hats but I just don't know how to wear them". I thought I'd take some time to try and distill some of my hat wearing knowledge and pass it on to you.

One of the main stumbling points to potential hat wear gals is hair. What hair goes well with a hat? What isn't going to work? The good news is that there is one general formula that works well. The bad news is that there isn't one magic hair do that looks great on everyone with every hat.

In general, you want a nice flat section of hair where the hat is going to sit. Since most 40s and 50s styles have a flat crown section, most of your dos will work with hats although victory rolls tend to be a no no with hats.

Generally, if a hat has a unique feature or some sort of asymmetry, I like to put that on the side of my head with the part so there is less hair in the way to block that detail.

But for every rule there's an exception.

Bangs also look really great with hats!

Some hats also require special hair dos. For example, turbans are usually worn with the hair slicked back which is very different from the average 40s hair style. If you are unsure, do some pinterest research to see how women wore your particular style of hat in period.

So now that we've gotten our hair taken care of, what should we wear with our great hats?

Hats in neutral colors such as brown, tan, white, navy, black, etc work just like neutrals in garments-they go with everything. And don't be afraid to mix neutrals. See I'm wear brown, white black and tan in the same outfit.

 Match your hat to your other accessories to bring a pop of color to an otherwise to matchy-matchy look.

Use a hat to bring out one of the more subtle colors in a print. The blue and greens stand out in this dress but the pink hat helps bring out the small pink flowers in the print and the pink buttons.

Wearing a similarly colored hat and skirt is a great option especially if the colors aren't an exact match. They'll be far enough away that you can't tell.

For a more authentic look, pick accessories and a hat that pull from one main color of your outfit to look sharp and put together.

 Don't be afraid to mix it up a bit. I love this navy blue and white hat but with only one sweater as the sum total of navy in my closet I didn't wear it much until I realized that I could wear it with other colors too!

For even more great hats, check out this video I made last year of a bunch of my hats.




What is your biggest hurdle when it comes to wearing hats?

Youtube: Hats-It's not what's in your head, it's what's on it.

I adore hats! I know a lot of you too so I decided to share some of them! I have posted about my wall of hats before but I got a few new ones to show you!

Youtube: Berets

It's so refreshing to wake up this morning and read loads of posts NOT about politics so here's my contribution.

Video about hats >>>politics




Cute pictures of animals are also acceptable anti-political posts. :)

Bird!

New To Me

I love getting new things but new to me things can be just as nice.

I recently went on a bit of a vintage pattern shopping spree. Some of these I bought for a specific project but some were just good deals.

A cute 40s dress complete with original embroidery transfer.

A cute scalloped 50s dress with fabric swatch pinned to it.

I also got this scalloped dress pattern with fabric swatch from the same seller as the one above. Both have handwritten notes on the envelope and I think they may have been from the same sewer's collection.

Super cute late 40s dress with detachable collar. I planned on using this dress for my white rayon until I found this pattern:

Super awesome early 40s shirtwaist dress!

One of my friends asked me if I would be interested in some of his mother's old hats and I said yes, of course!

A cute navy hat with 3 rhinestones.

A pink hat that looks like it may have had some veiling at some point in time. I'm thinking that I'd like to replace it.

And a very pretty white floral hat.

And right after I came home from Costume College, there were two surprises waiting for me!

Last summer when I went to visit my grandparents, one of my dad's cousins offered to give me her serger that she never used any more. Well, her house wasn't exactly on the way home and there was no room in our car to take it back home anyways so I figured it'd be a while before I ever saw the serger but my dad was nice enough to pick it up and drop it off for me when he went to see my grandparents while I was at CoCo. My dad's cousin also gave me a hemmer machine. Both the hemmer and serger will be visiting a sewing machine repair shop in the near future (hopefully) for a tune up before I use them but I'm super excited!

Thrifting Fun

Thrifting is a rare occurrence for me because I don't have a regular thrifting buddy. And when I take my poor husband, he's ready to leave after 5 minutes, but today we worked something out. I thrifted and he went to a near by bar or some place to watch sports. As I hate watching sports, this was fine by me.

First, I stopped by a thrift store I'd never been to before. Several people had told me that I had to go see all of the vintage stuff they had. So I was pretty excited. They did have some clothes, hats and furniture but I was a bit under whelmed. The bad thing about going to a thrift store that knows they have vintage is that they price like they know they have vintage. I was hoping to at least take home a hat but it was not to be. Most were damaged. :(

I did find some goodies in the craft area. I snagged two pairs of knitting needles, a vintage belt kit and a pack of lingerie guards.

I also found this lovely hiding among the 80s knitting magazines. I wasn't entirely sure what it was in the store but I thought these two ladies were cute enough to warrant $0.80

It appears to be an interfacing kit for making a tailored jacket. Here's what was inside:

Two pieces of canvas with some felt attached and also a piece for the collar.

The felt is attached with these zig zag stitches that look similar to things I've seen on other people's hand made jackets. It's a size 14 which is a bit smaller that I wear so we'll see what happens with it. Have you ever seen anything like this?

I also went to another thrift store (after some yummy Mexican for lunch) but no luck there. I wasn't really expecting much since there is a local vintage store right down the street from it. And since I was right there, I couldn't not pop in the vintage store for a visit. I was looking for separates today but I got distracted by hats.

I got this lovely 40s hat. Just love it! It's actually a bit more maroon than the photo shows.

I was very happy to find a 40s hat to add to my collection. One day I want to have as many hats as Solanah but I have a long way to go!

I also couldn't resist this little navy and white 50s hat. I have some graduation parties to attend tonight and I think I just have to wear this hat out!

I know I have some local(ish) readers and really you should check this place out. It's called Feather's Vintage Clothing. It's smaller that the other local vintage store that closed this past summer but they have very reasonable prices. I thought the prices were very fair and I loved that everywhere I looked, there were more hats! I'll definitely be stopping back!

Snapshots!

 Finally got some of my hats hanging in my bedroom!

New shoes!

I was in desperate need of some black t-strap shoes.

And more shoes! These read so 40s to me!

On a side note, can feet shrink? I've been a size 9 as long as I can remember, but for the past 6 months or so I've been good with 8.5 a lot but for both of these I had to go down to an 8!

Edwardian Millinery Adventures

I couldn't pass up the opportunity for some lovely millinery adventures when I made Mary's Garden Party dress.

Mary wears two hats with this dress. One at the flower show and this one at the garden party. It has an asymmetrical brim, some decorative ribbon and felt flowers.

I picked up this hat for $15 at Charming Charlie. I really liked the asymmetric brim and it was perfect for retrimming.

The original decorations were lightly hot glued on and came off easily.

Next, I hot glued on my own ribbon.

Then I made my own felt flowers using Gertie's tutorial. I made one from 2" wide, one from 1 1/2" wide, two from 1" wide, and four from 1/2" wide (two from shorter length and two from longer).

There wasn't any particular pattern to my arrangement. I just kept moving them around till I liked them.

The roses were super easy to make. I'm usually terrible at this kind of thing but I was really happy with them.

Antiquing Haul

 Saturday, my friend Laura and I went to an antique mall on Saturday and it was so much fun! There was tons and tons of stuff. It was quite overwhelming!

Laura had told me that the last time she went that there were lots of lovely hats so I was definitely on the look out for some.

Although my husband's comment as I was pulling them out of the bag was "How many did you get?!?", I really did restrain myself quite a bit and only brought home four.

The hat splurge of the day was this lovely straw sun hat with a velvet ribbon and bows at the front and back for $25. Not the steal of the day but much less than usually spend on hats on etsy so I was happy.

A lovely green and gold cocktail hat for $7. I suspect it may have had a few more feathers earlier in its life but it still looks nice.

This little white hat has pale pink flowers and a navy blue ribbon and was mine for $4.50. Spring , come soon!

I almost left this little feathered cocktail hat behind but when back and grabbed it at the last minute. At only $5, I couldn't resist.

Patterns were pretty scarce but reasonably priced. I snagged the only 3 non-childrens non-pj patterns that weren't 60s-now.

Skirts!

Skirts!

And more skirts! See the damage to the front of the cover? One of the workers taped my table tag to the front of it and my poor pattern was ripped when it came off. :( I haven't check any of these for completeness but at $1.50 each I figured it was worth the risk.

My find of the day was this lovely table on sale for $99. I don't know much about how vintage furniture should be priced but it seemed pretty fair to me. It wasn't in mint condition but it cleaned up really nice. It also has a leaf that can go in the middle. We've been considering getting a new kitchen table so this find was serendipitous. Just as soon as we get a new home for our old table this one will be quite happy in our kitchen. It didn't come with chairs so we have to find some. Any thoughts as to what would look good?

The antique mall was convinently located near a huge grocery store called Jungle Jims. They have EVERYTHING!!!! including my husband's favorite beer. So I picked him up a six pack of Hofbrau Dunkel and also grabbed some Sam Adams Winter Lauger (another but easier to find favorite) which was on sale cheap. He was pretty happy.