Hat Pins

When your hat is as big as a tea-tray, as perchy as an owl, or as wind-catching as the best ship’s sails, how on earth do you keep it on?  Why, with a hat pin, of course!  And you may recall having heard of dastardly deeds and bodily harm being done with such things, and perhaps wondered how realistic it was.  Basically, a hat pin is a skewer that goes through the hat, – and this is the key part – underneath the well-secured hair – and back out the other side of the hat.

Sometimes, as Mrs Gibson (or one of her friends) shows us here, we need two pins at a time. So, when the outer crown of hats, such as the Titanic styles show here, are   larger than one’s head, the pin also needs to be bigger than life, and otherwise up to the task it is set to.  A snug little cloche or tidily little fitted style, on the other hand, can make do with a much smaller, more delicate pin, as shown in the wee little boot. In a future season we hope to offer instructions here for both hair pins and hat pins.