All About Hats (Patricia Potter)

I was glued to the television this past weekend and the early part of the week. I couldn’t stop watching the visit of Queen Elizabeth.

It’s not that I’m particularly fond of the monarchy, but I’m fascinated with the royal hats.

After being attached to the television during her visit, I couldn’t help but wonder how many hats she’d brought and how many hat boxes had been required. I counted twelve different hats – all of which matched her suits – but I’m sure there were many more. One for every morning occasion, every noon occasion, every afternoon occasion, etc.

She rather met her match at the Kentucky Derby, the all-time crown event for hats. I love the Kentucky Derby for that very reason. To heck with the horses. I watch the hats.

I suppose it’s one of my small eccentricities.

I don’t wear hats, mainly for the public good, although I immensely enjoy seeing them on other people and whine over their decline in American society. The English, on the other hand, has made millinery into an art form.

Along with many things, I was late in coming to an appreciation of it. Perhaps because to wear hats well, you must be elegant, stylish or, as in the queen’s case, have a great sense of dignity. A pretty, lean face helps. Since I have none of the above I could only watch with wistful appreciation as others wore magnificent hats with such aplomb.

I didn’t really mind that much until I failed the hat test some twenty or more years ago. I attended the Masters Golf Tournament as a guest of a newspaper executive. Also invited was another woman I had never met. We were to share a room.

We talked on the phone, and since I was arriving late she said she would meet me inside the gates and give me a key to the room. She would be the person in a big hat with a yellow ribbon. I said okay. I should have said I would be the one person there without a hat.

But I didn’t know that at the time. I’d never even watched the Masters before. When I arrived, every woman – with the one exception of yours truly – wore a hat, thirty percent of which had a yellow ribbon.

I spent the entire day asking every third woman if she was Sarah as other people watched golf. There were lots of Sarahs with big hats and a yellow ribbon, but none was MY Sarah. We finally met that night at the hotel room. I was sunburned from my hatless state. My hair stood out in ten different directions from the wind.

Sarah was elegant, stylish with a pretty, lean face . . .

I felt like the redheaded child at the family reunion (now how many of you out there has ever heard of that southern expression?). It’s not a compliment.

We became friends, though, even best friends for many years. We still keep in touch to this day. I taught her how to eat pizza at eight in the morning, a skill she has since perfected, and she tried to teach me how to wear a hat, a skill I neverperfected.

Hats have since mostly disappeared from American society except at some churches where hats are considered a crowning glory and, of course, the Kentucky Derby. Ever hopeful, I do buy hats – an Australian outback hat and a terrific black and white checked Scottish tam in New Orleans – but I still don’t wear them well. I fear they look as silly as they sound.

Still, I have always lusted after elegant hats and being able to wear them well. On my list of lusting, it’s rather down on the list but there's still that wistful part of me that looks at Queen Elizabeth and envies her not for her riches or position or jewels, but for her hats.