The Brattleboro reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1907-1912, 1909-05-14
FREAK HATS FORCED ON WOMEN
What Has the Fair Sex Done to De
serve Such Horrid Treatment.

| Why such hats as have been on sal
| this spring for women? Among women
these days, this is the insistent cry a
they walk into the millinery rooms AM
survey this seasons output or discuss tn
horrid freaks at lunch. What on eartl
have women done to have such style
in hats thrust upon them? How have the,
in the least suggested to those who maxi
hats these very peculiar shapes! Why
should they have such hats when the.
don't want them? Where three or foul
women are lunching together it S safe tc
say that one or more of these questions
will be asked, but there will be no answer
1t is SO very hard to tell why.
One reason why these hats have amazed
women so is that they have appeared
right in the age of so much intelligent
talk about dressing in an artistic and be
coming way. 1t is quite as annoying as
slap in the face. How can a woman
carry out all the beautiful suggestions on
correct dressing in the magazines when
confronted with such hats? Now, in this
enlightened age, merely to think of a
woman wearing hoopskrrts and thinking
herself attractive thereby, makes the
twentieth century woman laugh and shrug
her shoulders as much as to say, poor,
old-fashioned ancestors of mine. what
women are learning to dress in really
good taste. They would never think now
of defacng their figures by wearing hoop
skirts"
Hoopsklrts are mentioned, not that
there is any danger of their appearing
today when fashions followers are dis
carding all the underclothes they can in
order to give the public as accurate a
presentation of their figure as they can.
but merely to ask why. women who would
not even think of hoopskirt without an
exclamation of disgust and who would
gasp to be seen wearing hustle, should
go about the streets wearing these col
ored waste baskets, as they have been
variously dubbed, on their heads. Which
will women couple of centuries hence
laugh at more, hoopslirts or bushel basket
hats? Certainly along with the other odd
articles of dress, the museums ought to
preserve some of the choicest of this
years shapes in hats
Now, honest blue, did you ever see such
queer, stiff, big things for hatsy Why.
some of them are almost untrimable. A
narrow band of tiny flowers or ribbon
around the lower part OF the bulglng
roundness of these chic new hats is about
the limit. The problem is about the
same as putting sash around the waist OF
a woman who is as big one way as she Is
the other and who tips the scales at 200
pounds The milliners are evidently W,
stump. Here are the hats. Hats are to be
trimmed. Some trimming must be put
upon them. The result is their frantic ell
forts to trim shape that really cannot
be trimmed.
1t looks as if the milliners had expended
all their ingenuity this year to get up trim
mings as odd and fantastic as the hats.
Such quilts and feathers that look as il
they came out of nightmare birds and ami
mails; such colored grasses and funny or
naments, and the worse and queerer the
trimmings look, the more expensive they
are! If you see a hat so queer, so like a
nightmare, so odd that it makes even men
turn around to look at it, gaze at it, re-
spectfully at least, for the lot of money it
represents. II is true that there have been
no hats of late years to hold the attention
of the men as these hats. The hats them
selves, as well as their bills, are a subject
of interest to the male sex.
There are really two kinds of hideous
hats this year. There are the hats so
enormous. with their sloping sides. that
even the most skillful milliners are baked
at getting on any trimming. Then there
are the hats of shapes that can be trimmed.