lIt wasn’t often you saw Queen Elizabeth with uncovered hair. On state occasions, a crown or tiara rested on top of a perfect hairstyle. At Balmoral’s stables, where she groomed her ponies in Wellington boots and a Barbour jacket, a patterned scarf was always tied under her chin.
But mostly it was a hat.
“You can hardly see it in isolation. There’s always a brooch, there’s usually pearls, there’s usually white gloves,” Beatrice Behlen, senior curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London, said in a phone interview in 2019. “And then the matching hat.”
Hats were part of the Queen’s life from childhood when she was photographed wearing beanies and berets. She would continue to wear them through adolescence and young adulthood, often in concert with younger sister Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother.
baby in a hat
As a toddler, the queen was already well known for impressive headgear. Here, circa 1928, she wears a lace cap with sheer ruffles.
From the start, her taste was bold and provocative. Commissioned by groundbreaking milliners such as Simone Mirman, Freddie Fox and, more recently, Rachel Trevor-Morgan, she embraced unconventional shapes, floral appliqués, feathers and the full spectrum of colors.
As a princess and during the early days of her reign, Elizabeth was a trendsetter. In February 1944, when she wore “an officer’s cap-based creation” to the wedding of Lieutenant (later Captain) Christopher Wake-Walker and Lady Anne Spencer (Princess Diana’s aunt), the Associated Press reported copies were arriving quickly. sold. about London; and in 1946 the price of ostriches in South Africa is said to have skyrocketed after she and her mother wore ostrich feathers on their hats at the VE Day Parade in London.
A couple of princesses with peak caps
Elizabeth leaves the 1944 wedding of Lady Anne Spencer and Lieutenant Christopher Wake-Walker and steps out next to Princess Margaret wearing a cap-topped jacket and a neat double-breasted coat.
When the Queen wasn’t setting trends, she embraced them, following the fashion for small hats in the ’50s and joining Barbra Streisand and Bianca Jagger in their embrace of the turban in the ’70s.
Sunshine in Mexico
In 1975, on a visit to Mexico, the Queen shone in a sunny yellow polka dot turban and a matching belted dress.
“The Queen doesn’t have to be ‘fashionable’; she IS fashion — and she has inspired her generation to return to elegance, appreciate quality and dress appropriately,” Dorothy Shaver, then president of Lord department store & Taylor necklace, stated to the Los Angeles Times in 1957, ahead of the Queen’s first state visit to America.
In the 1960s, hats were in fashion due to changing attitudes and trends. But the queen was not deterred. “Growing up, it was completely normal to wear hats so that everyone, every woman, would have worn a hat,” explains Behlen. “It’s going to be a trademark if she keeps wearing them when everyone else stops.”
As is always the case with women in politics, Elizabeth’s dress was dissected and examined. She often seemed to use this to her advantage, using her accessories as vehicles for subtle messages.
In 1946, she wore an oversized beret to meet a group of Girl Guides and a “cross between a pillbox and a bedazzled ushanka” to Slovakia in 2008, the artist and educator Oliver Watts wrote in The Conversation. “While ‘good’ for the occasion, this should also be some kind of joke, a bit of humor to put people at ease with humor and generosity,” he added.
Visiting the terracotta army
Wearing a sky-blue hat and veil, the Queen inspects the 2,000-year-old terracotta army during a 1986 visit to Xian, China.
We must assume that a similar motive was behind her decision to wear a blue-and-yellow hat – to match the colors of the European Union flag – to open the UK Parliament in 2017, just as Brexit negotiations began. . “Is the Queen wearing an EU hat?” the BBC, and countless other social media speculators, wondered. But of course she never said that.
Addressing a country divided by Brexit
In 2017, during the opening of the House of Representatives, the queen’s lapis blue hat caused a lot of commotion. Designed by royal seamstress Angela Kelly and milliner Stella McLauren, it was quickly interpreted as an anti-Brexit symbol due to its uncanny resemblance to the EU flag.
Perhaps the most lasting effect of wearing her hat is the indelible mark it left on Britain.
During her 70-year reign, she helped solidify the hat as a symbol of high-society sophistication, an appealing anachronism, and a beacon of Britishness.
This is especially noteworthy considering that across Europe, queens like Letizia of Spain and Máxima of the Netherlands now reserve hats for the most formal occasions.
The Royal Air Force turns 100
At the 2018 Royal Airforce Centenary, the Queen stepped out in a blue and teal coat, complete with matching hat embellished with a peacock feather, designed by Angela Kelly.
“The patronage of the Royal Family keeps hats alive. Her Majesty the Queen has kept hats alive in the imaginations of people around the world,” hatter Philip Treacy said in a 2018 episode of the BBC radio show “Desert Island Discs” .
“If the royal family chose not to wear hats — let’s say in the 60s or 70s when some people gave them up — I wouldn’t really be here having this conversation with you, because hats make part of the culture of Englishness and of Britishness.”
Royal Ascot
The Queen brought an otherwise muted gray outfit to life with floral and feather details — both on her pleated hat and the matching jacket.
However, there are occasions on the British calendar where hat-wearing remains de rigueur – not least Royal Ascot, a horse racing event where the Queen was once a guaranteed participant. British bookmakers famously accepted bets on which color they would pick at the annual meet, with pink and blue being the most worn in recent years, according to betting company William Hill.
Even she withdrew from public life, her mobility decreased markedly, the Queen seized every opportunity to be visible and often paired brightly colored frock coats with matching hats so that she could not be missed by her subjects.
One of Elizabeth II’s last public appearances, during her platinum anniversary celebrations in 2022, seemed to epitomize her approach. Bright green brought a moment of joy to the thousands of people who gathered at Buckingham Palace, but it was tempered by a poignant act of tribute: a black pin on her hat in memory of husband Prince Philip, who had passed away a year earlier.
Platinum Anniversary
During her platinum anniversary celebrations, the Queen wore a black pin on a bright green hat in honor of her late husband Prince Philip.