HATS TO TURN HEADS

Hats turn heads, whether it's to see how good you look in the mirror or it's the people in the street nodding at your sense of style.
                                                                                  

                                                                                                                 

 Getty Images

Joan Crawford could always pull off wearing hats of all types in her movie roles. It helped that she had Adrian design her outfits. Adrian was the son of milliners, and always considered how the hat should fit into the complete look of the oufit. Here Joan wears a black belted jacket adorned with her favorite flower, a gardenia boutonniere, on her wide lapel. She wears a wide-brimmed black Panama straw hat, 1936.

                                              

Joan wears another beautiful hat cocked to the right as was the fashion in the 1930s (they were always slanted down towards your right side). By the 1940s, women wore their hats straight. Her jacket is a tweed with the wide lapels Adrian favored.

A somewhat less formal Joan as she appeared in Love on the Run in 1936. The simple hat is given a lot of style with the single pheasant's feather. While Adrian often designed his own hats, he usually used hats from Mr. John (John P. John), both at MGM and at his own fashion salon.

Fay Wray looks beautiful in her cocked felt hat in Murder in Greenwich Village in 1935. Fay was King Kong's squeeze in the 1933 film.

The beret always looks stylish on women. Its size varies, so when small it can look cute or prim, and when large or floppy it can look hip or bohemian. The photo above says it all about the  bohemian chic look, here on Marian Marsh in 1935 for the film Crime and Punishment.

Women's hats fashioned after men's hat styles have long been popular. Here Carole Lombard wears a fur fedora in 1937.

Adrian designed this suit in 1944 to be photographed with a man's style top hat. The veil softened the look and made it more mysterious.

Costume and fashion designer Irene Lentz Gibbons also designed outstanding suits combined with great hats. This hat too plays on the masculine, a bowler with veiling, circa 1949. The suit plays on the English gentleman, but with horizontal chalk stirpes and complemented with umbrella. 

                                             

The short brimmed men's fedora is now in style for young women. Here Mary Quant, who introduced mini-skirts, wears one in London in 1961.

As Mary Quant said, women look great in men's hats. But they also look great in women's hats. It's good that men, at least young men, are starting to wear hats other than caps. Your head always looks good in a stylish hat, whether it's to turn to look at yourself - or when your head gets turned by somebody else. Hats on to hats.