Hats Through the Decades - Sepia Saturday

 "Hats" is the theme of this week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph - no shortage of a match from my collection,  beginning with grand floral fancy hats from the early 1900s worn by my cousin's ancestors in Blackpool, Lancashire.

  Onto the 1920s and 1930s  for some further  fashions in hats.

My husband's great aunt Pat King, nee Hibbert, on the beach with her little daughter Annette, born in 1919. 

My husband's parents Ivy White and John Robert Donaldson of South Shields, County Durham.  They married in 1929. 

 

 My great aunt Jennie Danson in 1929 in the fashionable cloche hat.

My mother, Kathleen Danson in the 1930s

 1950's-1960's 

 Most of these photographs date from the 1960's,  when my mother and husband's mother  would have been 60 years old.   At a time when fashion was changing rapidly   and I was wearing mini skirts, the older generation still  wore  for everyday occasions hats that  we now reserve for formal wear.  Turbans seemed to be the main fashion style here. 
 

 

For a visit to the Zoo 

For a summer outing

For a visit to the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh

For my graduation IN 1965 - so more of a formal occasion

 For a Sunday afternoon run in the car 

Meanwhile  for me, hats were purely practical - for keeping warm in winter and providing shade in (hot) summers.  

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity to share their family history through photographs

Click  HERE to find out what other bloggers have found

in this week's prompt photograph.  

 

 

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Hats off to the Ladies : Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph features an elegant lady in pearls, fox fur and wearing a large hat.    There is no shortage of large hats  among my extended family.  

1910s-20s

 An elegant portrait of Sarah Alice Oldham on her wedding to George Butler in Blackpool, Lancashire  and what a showy outfit, magnificently decorated large hat, and a large posy set off by  long broad ribbons!      Sarah came from a family of carters and coal-men down three generations and George also worked in the business.  

This charming photograph is of Sarah's sister, Beatrice Oldham who married Jack Clark in Blackpool, Lancashire  on 26^th December 1919. I feel the significance of the date after the First World War is not lost in this photograph,  where there is a certain air of informality and lack of ostentation,  with a large, but plain hat and a shorter skirt and the groom carrying a trilby hat.   It contrasts with the very formal opulent dress style  at Sarah's wedding nine years earlier in 1910. 

More large  hats were worn (above)  by Mary Jane Oldham, nee Bailey and her sister-in-law Sarah Butler, nee Oldham.    Mary Jane Bailey  and my grandfather William Danson were cousins.   Below is another creation worn by Sarah's other sister Edith. 

 

 

My husband's great aunt Pat King, nee Hibbert, on the beach with her little daughter Annette, born in 1919.

 

 

"A lady always wears  a hat" - an unidentified photograph in my great aunt Jennie's collection of a group of friends on an outing - but don't  they look glum!

A Happy Occasion!   The formal engagement photograph of my husband's parents,  Ivy White and John Robert Donaldson of South Shields, County Durham.  They married in 1929. 

 

 

1930's-40's 

Hats, gloves and fox furs were the fashion!  Hats were generally small, but often embellished with decorative bows or feathers. Fox furs were the aspirational accessory for many women from an ordinary background and are proudly worn here by members of my extended family.  I remember my mother keeping hers wrapped in tissue paper  in a box in her wardrobe  I didn''t like touching it - those beady eyes in the head were unnerving. 

 

 

 My mother Kathleen Danson with her sister - my Aunt Edith.  Is that a fox fur my mother is  wearing and can I glimpse a necklace?  

 

My grandmother Alice Danson, nee English

 

My husband's mother - Ivy Donaldson, nee White

But wearing big hats began at a young age:

 

From the American branch of my mother's family -  young Florence Mason, with her father c.1906.  Born 1898 in Brooklyn, New York,  she was the youngest of a large family of eleven, eight  surviving infancy.

 

My mother Kathleen Danson, c.1911 taking part in a parade in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire.  She does not look too happy in her little bootees, frilly white dress and large hat - but so adorable!

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What if you were looking to buy a hat?  Here is an advertisement from my local paper "The Earlston Comet"  of 1891.  On the High Street, David Wallace, draper and clothier promised:

"An Immense and Magnificent Collection of every New and Fashionable  Dress Material....which for Variety, Superior Quality, Good Taste and Moderate Prices is unequaled in Earlston.

Tweeds in Cheviot, Homespun, Harris and Grampian makes, latest styles and newest mixtures, Black materials in great variety.

The latest novelties in Millinery, Flowers, Feathers etc.  Bonnets composed of Velvet and Jet, from 10s.6d to 25s.  The latest novelty in hats is Gladys in French Beaver, trimmed with Feathers.  All orders for this Department made up in the most Fashionable and Tasteful Manner." 

Note the reference to "black materials" - at a time when formal mourning wear was still the custom.  Somehow the name "Gladys" does not quite conjure up an image of a French beaver hat with feathers!

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers  

to share their family history and memories through photographs

 

 Click HERE to see other fashionable ladies on this week's Sepia Saturday blog