Forget-Me-Not · Innes Wichita 1940s Blue Flower Hat
Fabric flowers on straw base · velvet bow · blue floral net lining · cornflower grosgrain inner band · Innes, Wichita · 1940s to early 1950s
A dome covered entirely with small fabric flowers, each one individually attached, their petals edge-cut, each centre a small cluster of blue stamens. The colour is cornflower: a clear, mid blue that runs absolutely consistent from petal to petal across the whole surface. A wide velvet bow sits at one side. This hat required considerable patience.
Innes, Wichita, 1940s to early 1950s. Mid-century American millinery produced hats of extraordinary imaginative range: the flower hat, the veil hat, the sculptural wool felt, all of them made in an era when a woman was expected to have a hat for every occasion and the milliners obliged. Flowers like these were made in workrooms by hand, petal by petal, each one heated and pressed into shape before attachment. The flowers on this hat are in extraordinary condition for a piece of this age, their colour intact and petals unbroken, the result of a hatbox and careful keeping.
Care
Store in a hatbox, crown up. Keep away from moisture.
More on looking after vintage pieces in our care guide.
Size
Measured flat: Interior circumference approx. 55cm. Please measure your head before purchasing.
Our size guide explains how vintage sizing is read here.
Condition
Good. The fabric flowers are bright and petals intact. The tulle base holds its structure. A small number of flowers show gentle compression from storage and will ease with wear.
Our condition lexicon explains the grades we use.
Before it reaches you
Someone loved this before you did, and I try to honour that properly. Each piece is hand washed, or cleaned in the way that the fabric permits, then steamed until it softens and straightens and feels newly attended to. Wherever a button was missing, it has been replaced with a vintage one from my long-kept collection. Wherever a hem had given way, I fix it by hand. By the time it leaves this room it is genuinely clean, pressed, whole, and looked over one final time before I let myself believe it is ready. Not restored. Not made new. Just returned to a state where it can be loved again, by someone who was not there the first time.
A whole dome of cornflowers, every one cut and heated and pressed and attached by hand, which makes this less a hat than a small field somebody agreed to carry about on their head. Forget-me-nots and cornflowers are the flowers of remembering and of loyalty, so the wearer is quietly promising something to everyone she nods to, whether she means to or not. The blue holds dead level from petal to petal, the way a real meadow never manages, because this one is not permitted to fade. Kept in a hatbox for eighty years, it has been saving its considerable patience for the next head brave enough to bloom.