ABSTRACT
Brighter suits and breezier overcoats; nattier shirts and hattier headgear … all these are inevitable corollaries to a shortage of eligible women. The necessity for men to look attractive may even force them to invest hats with the importance of millinery. And feathers, too: from sweeps of ostrich to the modest peep of a game-bird’s feather, men’s hats have in every century been embellished by varying amount of plumage. On the whole the impression of the fashion show given by the Hatters’ Information Centre at Londonderry House was not colourful: sober browns and greys, quiet greens, the shades of forest fungi. The ordinary woman, untrained in the subtle niceties of crown and brim and dent, may well wonder what have men’s hats got that fungoid growths have not. The difference between women’s millinery and men’s hats is as the difference between haute cuisine and plain cooking.
