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The tradition of the Easter bonnet is not what it once was, although for some people, hats never went away. In the African-American community, for example, there is a strong tradition of wearing hats to church; in England ladies wear hats to weddings (and Ascot), and New York has the Easter parade. Despite their relative rarity–or more likely because of it–when people do wear hats, it tends to be very noticeable. Which is perhaps why more people don’t feel comfortable wearing them. The topper Aretha Franklin wore to President Obama’s inauguration inspired its own Facebook fan page and generated a lot of publicity and new business for the Detroit-based milliner who created it.
In her blog the Lazy Milliner, local writer and hat designer Mary Beth Klatt writes that she senses a revival of a certain kind of hat: the cloche, a style that was popular during the Roaring 20s–and its aftermath, the Great Depression.
