For the fun of it, I just Googled “hat’ and then “hair” to see if any interesting news stories popped up.  I thought I’d find some fashion reviews, or celebrity mentions, or something like that.  Well, I got two good stories – but they were NOT what I was expecting!

The best hat-related story was funny, in a horrible sort of way.  A woman got mad at her ex-boyfriend, and for revenge, she put 24 of his favorite baseball caps in the bathtub, doused them in gasoline, and lit them on fire.  She was arrested on charges of mischief and arson, (more…)

When you picture certain people, you automatically dress them in certain clothes.  Think about the dress-up box in your kindergarten classroom – all those uniforms.  Wearing a uniform helps people recognize what a person does.  But how did we come to associate mortarboards with graduating students, or those tall white hats with chefs and bakers, and so on?

The first police uniforms were created in London in 1829; the first US police uniform was established in New York in 1853.  Those outfits were basically dark, plain versions of what most people wore back then. (more…)

When you think of a bonnet, you probably think of Laura Ingalls Wilder on the prairie, or little girls in fancy dresses with frilly hats.  Can you believe that they used to be the height of French fashion?

Well, maybe not the height, but certainly in style in various forms, for a good 150 years.  Technically, a bonnet is a brimless hat (hence the term being used to describe several hats that aren’t what you might think of as bonnets – particularly certain Scottish caps).  The predecessor to the sunbonnet were small caps worn to protect hair from dust and so on – similar to what might also be called a coif.  Early bonnets were very unstructured, and sometimes became more like turbans.

By the 19th century they began to take on more specific shapes.  They were made of both cloth and straw, and elaborately decorated with flowers and ribbons.   (more…)

The cloche hat is iconic of the 1920′s, but it is still popular today.  It is characterized by its bell-like shape (cloche is the French word for bell) and a close fit around the head.  Cloches can be made of felt or straw, and are worn low on the forehead.  They could be plain or elaborately decorated with ribbons, beads, applique, embroidery, jeweled brooches, or clusters of feathers.  A cloche’s brim can be worn down or, more typically, turned up.

They were first designed in 1908, but became wildly popular in the 1920′s, in the Art Deco fashion culture. (more…)

Straw hats are the perfect summer accessory.  They’re light, they shade you from the sun, and they come in every possible shape, size, and style.  And while they have a long history, they are anything but outdated!

Straw hats aren’t always made from straw, you know!  The term is applied to most hats made from woven or braided plant fibers.  Straw itself refers to the stalk of grain plants such as oat and rye. Other common hat fibers are sisal, raffia, rush, buntal, abaca, jute, seagrass, ramie, and toquilla palm (used to make those famous Panama hats).  These materials vary in color and texture, so they make a wide variety of hats. (more…)

Ok, I know we just did a blog post of crazy runway styles, but I can’t let a British royal wedding go by without pointing out some of the real screamers.  For Americans, the wedding-hat thing is pretty strange because it’s not the fashion in the US.  The idea of wearing one at all comes from the fact that until relatively recently, weddings pretty much always took place in churches, and people were expected to cover their heads in church.  Even though some churches have more relaxed rules now, and people are getting married in other venues, the connection between hats and weddings still lingers.  It remains to be seen whether all the hoopla will inspire a wedding hat trend outside the UK. (more…)

We’ve done a few posts about washing and caring for your hair – but caring for your hairCOVERINGS is just as important!  If you don’t know what to do, you could end up ruining a favorite item.  Last summer, a bird pooped on my navy tichel with lurex stripes (yet another reason to love covering – at least it ended up on a tichel instead of my hair!).  Without thinking, I threw it into the regular laundry.  It came out shrunken, faded, and with broken lurex threads poking out all over the place.  Clearly, I need to be more careful with my washing methods.

How often you wash your headgear is up to you.   (more…)

Does anyone else have trouble keeping track of which fashion shows relate to which future seasons?  After a year of blogging about accessories, you’d think I’d have learned the schedule by now.  Anyway, Fall/Winter 2011 fashion shows took place back in February, and I just came across the most insane runway hat styles this week.  WHAT are these designers thinking?  I just have to share the top nine wildest ones now!

1. First up is this teeny little gray dude by Francesca Biondi, (more…)

The UK’s Telegraph recently posted a gallery on their fashion webpage of celebrities photographed wearing various winter hat styles.  For those of you who like to see what popular actors, models, and other personalities are wearing, there’s good news: most of what they’re wearing is totally normal and easy to replicate on your own.

Simple beanies and furry “trapper hats” (remember the ushanka from last week?) appear to be all the rage among people who have their pick of the latest fashions.  Check out the gallery here, and then check out some of our best winter offerings below.

• Apparently, the simple wide-ribbed chaponne is the go-to hat this winter.  Try a cabled chaponne for a bit of a twist on the plain ribs. (more…)

I’m planning ahead.  Snow is expected in my neck of the woods by Tuesday, which I’m hoping will translate into a Wednesday snow day.  That means I have two days to buy a sled and make sure my family has everything we need to stay warm.  And when it comes to warm headgear, no one beats the Russians.

You know those fur-lined hats with the earflaps that are getting more popular every year?  The style is known as the ushanka (plural: ushanky). (more…)

English is a funny language, full of weird expressions that people use without always knowing why.  My inspiration for this post came when I searched Google News for the word “hat,” to see if there has been anything interesting going on in the world of accessories lately.  But most of the hits that I found had to do with hockey players scoring hat tricks!

So, I got curious, and found a website that explains the meanings of all kinds of strange idioms.   Then I hunted up a whole bunch of hat-related sayings.  How many of these have you actually heard used in conversation?

• Hat trick*: to score three times in one game (especially in hockey or soccer) is called a hat trick. (more…)

Last week, I posted about the “ingredients” that go into making an actual hat.  This week, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite subjects: creative baking.

I had this Betty Crocker Kids Cookbook when I was little (it actually belonged to my mother when SHE was little…) that was full of fun, easy recipes.  Some of them were actually tasty.  There was a huge section full of gorgeous cakes, complete with full-color photographs, in the most fascinating shapes; an igloo, a drum set, a bunny rabbit, and so on – including directions to creating an incredibly realistic-looking hat cake. (more…)

Describing a hat can be tough sometimes.  They have all kinds of weird shapes, random bits that stick out, and come in so many different materials.  But when you’re on your cell phone in a store, trying to explain what you’re looking at to the person on the other end of the line (Should I buy this?  Do you want this?), having a vocabulary of hat-describing terms can help.

These are the basic parts of a hat:

• Crown: the part that covers the top of head.  Crowns can be high or low, wide or narrow.  Our soft classy winter hat is an example of a high crown. (more…)

When you travel to a foreign country, do you spend weeks ahead of time immersed in Rosetta Stone software, or do you figure that if you say it loud and slow enough, everyone will understand?

If you’ve ever had the experience of shopping across a language barrier, you know how awkward it can get.  That’s why I put together this handy-dandy guide to how you say “hat” in 30 different languages.  Save it for your next vacation!

Arabic: kobba’a (Well, that’s classical Arabic.  My friend Nour says that in Syria, they say ta’yeh, and other places have different dialects, but that everyone would understand if you said kobba’a.  They just might giggle a little.)

Chinese: màozi (I listened to the pronunciation on Google translate, and I would never have figured out how to say it otherwise!) (more…)

Teresa Giudice is the star of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New Jersey. This Sunday she came to the American Hotel in Freehold, NJ to benefit the Food bank. We were there as well!

So, I hit my favorite good-weather outdoors event (I’ve mentioned it before) this past weekend, and it was fabulous.  The awesome thing about Renaissance Faires is that you can wear the wildest, wackiest outfits – or at least ogle people in them – and it’s totally ok.  You don’t have to be authentic, although people are more impressed when you are.  It’s the one chance a lot of people get to indulge in their romantic, old-fashioned, Gothic, Celtic, or witchy sides.  You can be anyone you feel like dressing as!

Of course, I made sure to inspect every clothing, jewelry, and (duh) hat shop or vendor that I passed.  Here’s a rundown of the most popular headgear styles you can get and wear at a Renaissance Faire.  They make excellent costumes for the rest of the year, and if you’re feeling adventurous, totally put one on and hit the mall. (more…)

Have you ever wondered where the names of different clothing styles come from?  Ok, some are pretty obvious, like bell-bottoms or straw hat.  But who decided that a sweater that fastens down the front should be called a cardigan?  Or that snood would be a good name for the crocheted thingy that women were tucking their hair into?

So, I put on my Googling gloves once again, and dug up some info on the origins of the names of different hat styles.  I bet you didn’t realize that some of them are derived from the names of people or places.

Take the fedora for instance; this brimmed hat that I described in a recent post was actually named after a woman – well, a character really.  (more…)

With all our talk about hats and hair accessories for women, you might know a guy or two who wants to get it on the fun.  Or you might just be really fashion-conscious, so you know that menswear-inspired hats are really in now – for women.  Either way, you need to know what’s what in the world of men’s hats.  Here’s a rundown of what guys – and girls – are wearing on their heads these days. Actually, men have been wearing most of these styles for a good hundred years.  These are all classics!

• Fedora – Everyone knows fedoras.  They’re defined by the fact that they’re creased down the length of the crown, and pinched in the front on both sides.  Fedoras can be made of straw, but are most commonly felt.  Ironically, they started out as a fashion for women in the late 1800’s; they became a runaway hit for men in the 1920’s. (more…)

The Tudor dynasty reigned in England from 1485 to 1603.  Famous Tudors that you may recall included Henry VIII, who had six wives (of which he divorced two and killed two), and his daughters Mary (aka Bloody Mary) and Elizabeth (who hasn’t heard of Queen Elizabeth?).  This was a time when kings and queens and their hangers-on did their best to show everyone how important they were by dressing the part.  Their clothing was rich and opulent, and involved large quantities of expensive fabrics and trimming.  Big ruffs around the neck, huge skirts, lots of brocade and velvet – and lots of perfume to hide the stench from all the sweat that they rarely washed off. (more…)

No matter how many hair coverings and accessories you have, you always need more.  A new color, a new style, something on sale, something because you’re hungry and trying to avoid the Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer.  I can come up with any excuse for needing a new accessory, even though my tichel drawer is overflowing and I keep knocking over my hat and headband box and making a mess in my closet.  So I got it in my head recently to count up how many tichels, headbands, etc., I have.  And here are my results!

• 5 pre-tieds (more…)