ABSTRACT
The straw boater flat as a saucer and shellacked to a board-hard stiffness was in vogue from 1870, when machines capable of sewing straw were invented, until 1926, when Blackwood's Magazine administered the symbolic death knell, referring to it as that horrible and obsolete form of headgear. The hat popped up continually in magazine illustrations and Impressionist paintings of the common man at play. The popularity of boaters owed as much to their evocation of supreme lightness they floated rather than fitting snugly on the head as to their low cost. In addition, one of the era's most charismatic entertainers, Maurice Chevalier, made the hat his own; its lighthearted appearance combined with his unshakably sunny disposition proved to be the perfect match. Once the boater slipped out of fashion its playful character seemed out of place during the Depression and World War II, not to mention the frenetic pace of the post-war era nothing could revive it.
