WriteAntiques

Up until the Regency period, ladies secured their hats – usually sensible affairs with tasteful frills – with ribbons, those imported from France being considered the most fetching.
In the 1820s and 30s, hats were still of a manageable size and small decorative hatpins were used unobtrusively to keep them in place.
But by the late Victorian period, hats began to grow, eventually to gargantuan proportions.
Two things quickly became vital additions to a woman’s wardrobe: one was sufficient hair – either her own or someone else’s in the form of a wig – with which to support the hat, the other, long hatpins with which to secure it.

[Read more →]