All the Queen's Hats

The Queen is dead. Long live the king!

Yesterday marked the passing of one of the longest-reigning monarchs in modern history, and the only English monarch most of us alive today have known in our lifetime: Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Elizabeth was known for many things throughout her lifetime: her military experience, her family troubles, her love of corgis and horses, her devotion to her country, and most of all, her extensive and coordinated collection of coats, bags, and hats. 

Oh, the hats. 

As a fellow lover of hats, I am paying tribute to her late majesty with a review of some of the lovely (and a few less-than-lovely) hats she wore through her long and illustrious reign. But before we look at the hats, let's look at where the hats come from - specifically, who makes all those marvelous hats for the queen and the rest of the royal family?

Since 2006, a milliner named Rachel Trevor-Morgan, along with her staff, has worked with the queen's dressmaker, Stewart Parvin, to create hats that coordinate with the queen's many outfits. Trevor-Morgan was awarded a Royal Warrant of Appointment in 2014, an honor granted as "a mark of recognition to people or companies who have regularly supplied goods or services to HM The Queen, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh or HRH The Prince of Wales or their Households." Trevor-Morgan has a model of the queen's head that she uses to assure that every hat she creates is a perfect fit.

In addition to Trevor-Morgan, the queen's millinery has been provided by designers including Freddy Fox (who created over 350 of the queen's hats since 1968), Simone Mirman, Philip Somerville, Marie O'Regan, Patey Hats of London, Philip Treacy (who is also a favorite of both Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle), Claude Saint Cyr, and Aage Thaarup. It's been estimated that the queen has worn over 5,000 hats during her reign. Fox has stated that when the queen travels, she has a separate railcar just for her hats! Somerville has noted that the queen did have favorite hats that she would wear as many as 20 or 30 times each, but that some hats are worn only once. When she was finished with a hat, the queen would frequently give them to her dressers to either keep or sell, and on several occasions the queen provided not only hats but handbags to be showcased as part of a London art exhibit. 

A few additional interesting facts:

*    The reason the queen always wears hats is that they serve as a symbol of or substitute for her royal crown.

*    It has become tradition to bet on the color of the hat the queen wears to the Royal Ascot each year, so the queen's dresser, Angela Kelly, would leave "decoy hats" around Buckingham Palace so no one could cheat!

*     When the queen visited foreign countries, she would frequently change decorations on her hat to reflect the country she was visiting, such as including colors of the national flag or a national emblem of the host country.

*    During every Order of the Garter ceremony, the queen wears a hat with a feather plume.

*     Since the queen's hats are worn at public engagements, they are all designed to avoid shading her face. 

*     The queen's staff is always prepared with a coordinating headscarf in case of rain or if a hat becomes damaged or dirty.  

So now let's walk through some of Queen Elizabeth's hats through the decades!

The 1920s and 1930s

Princess Elizabeth was born in 1926, so one of the earliest photos of her wearing a hat is this charming 1928 picture of her in her pram, wearing a frilly bonnet. 

In 1933, Elizabeth accompanied her grandmother, Queen Mary, to Scotland. Elizabeth's cloche-style straw hat was decorated with a simple wreath of flowers. 

In 1938, a 12-year-old Elizabeth watched a rehearsal for the Aldershoot tattoo wearing an elegant broad-brimmed felt picture hat trimmed with small flowers.

The 1940s

Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret donned simple straw sunhats for this outing in 1941, a typical style for young girls at that time. 

Other youthful photographs of Elizabeth wearing hats are these three uniform hats: As a Girl Guide in 1942, with sister Margaret in their Sea Ranger uniforms in 1944, and as a member of the Auxiliary Territory Service (ATS) circa 1946.

As she grew into adulthood, Elizabeth began to favor more stylish and unusual hats. At her 1947 wedding to Prince Philip, she donned this chic "going-away hat" designed by Aage Thaarup.

Her love for brightly colored hats and coordinating coats was already evident at the christening of eldest son Charles in 1948, with a vivid red ensemble featuring a hat with a large looped ribbon bow and a sheer black floating veil.

The 1950s

Elizabeth continued to coordinate her hats and dresses, wearing a simple blue wool topper with a tulle fan detail at the side to daughter Anne's christening in 1950. 

By the 1950s, hats were often tiny, brimless designs fitting close to the head. In this photo, taken during a visit to the British Industries Fair, Elizabeth wears a demure pale lace hat perched on top of her head, coordinating with the light-colored piping on her suit. 

By 1959, hats had - in my humble opinion - grown uglier and less flattering, as shown in this 1959 visit to a school cooking class. Elizabeth's feathery hat looks more like a bathing cap than the stylish hats she'd worn in the past. It is also less tied-in to the rest of her ensemble.

The 1960s

By 1961, the "bathing cap-style" hat was fully entrenched, as shown by Elizabeth's fluffy cap worn on an international visit.

Fortunately, the ugly hats were still interspersed with pretty, feminine hats. This short-brimmed hat topped with a ring of daises and tulle netting, which Elizabeth wore to visit a maternity home in 1962, was a vast improvement over some previous looks.

Perhaps a small step up from the feathery bathing cap hats, this pillbox hat was trimmed with fabric leaves that draped down toward Elizabeth's face as she headed to a church service in 1963. 

But during a visit to Sudan in 1965, she returned to the feathery bathing cap look. When both Queen Elizabeth and Elizabeth Taylor fail to pull off the look, you know it's a bad style.

The 1970s

The 1970s weren't much of an improvement, as they shifted to turban and modified turban styles. There is a bit of whimsy in Elizabeth's yellow-with-white-polka-dot dress and matching turban, worn during a 1975 trip to Mexico, but I prefer the modified blue-and-white turban-style hat with the tulle detail at the back in an undated photo from the 1970s.

This green kerchief-style bandeau with 3-dimensional white flowers worn in 1973 was created by Simone Mirman. 

As we get later into the 1970s, hat fashions turned to high, upturned brims with trimming at the top, as worn by Elizabeth in these two photographs from 1977. I particularly love the black-and-white outfit with a solid black coat over a black-and-white print dress that transitions from lighter at the top to darker at the bottom, tied together by a solid black hat trimmed with white-edged black ribbon.

The 1980s

During the early 1980s, Elizabeth tended to favor baggy tam-o-shanter and over-sized beret style hats. The first two photographs below are from 1980, one with tufted details and one with a large feathery tassel; the third is from 1981, a rich blue velvet with curly black feathers at the side; and the fourth, worn during a visit to Fiji in 1982, a dark green base trimmed with a large silk cabbage rose in cobalt blue.

During the mid-1980s, styles became more varied, with Elizabeth wearing everything from this feathery modified polka-dot turban in 1982...

...to a pillbox with geometric cutouts at the top and a large cabbage rose at the side, worn on a trip to India in 1983...

...to a tall fur pouf worn on a trip to Canada in 1983...

...to a navy-and-white cap worn to visit (appropriately enough) a Naval Dockyard...

...to a green pillbox topped with a large, looped, polka-dot bow worn for another visit to Canada, in 1984.

Toward the end of the 1980s, however, the queen mixed more traditionally-shaped, low, brimmed hats with a few more unusual shapes and styles. The crown of this hat, designed by Philip Somerville, was covered in the same fabric as the dress it was worn with, a feature that Elizabeth would favor often from 1989, when she wore this hat, well into the 2000s.

Elizabeth was still fond of structurally unusual and asymmetrical shapes, such as this folded lavender hat with lilacs tucked inside, and this blue-and-pink upturned brim hat, both worn in 1989 (the latter to a luncheon in Singapore).

The 1990s

The 1990s was the clear beginning of the style that Elizabeth would favor for the rest of her life: Broad-crowned, flat-brimmed hats in vivid colors with stark but interesting decorations. However, she still mixed these in with more unusual shapes and styles. This purple-and-white striped hat, worn on a visit with President George Bush in 1991, is an elegant example of the former style.

This rakishly tilted hat again featured a crown trimmed in her dress fabric, but it also added another feature Elizabeth would come to favor: bows and other trims underneath the raised side of the hat brim. She wore this ensemble on a 1993 tour of Cyprus.

In 1995, she wore this jaunty red pillbox, updated with large wool loops at the back.  

And an unfortunate flashback to the 1970s turban era in this 1995 turquoise and mustard yellow hat.

The 2000s

This decade was the beginning of what some refer to as the queen's "Mad Hatter" phase, as she came to favor hats with tall, asymmetric crowns or crowns with concave sides instead of straight up. She wore this deep purple hat with its angled crown and feather-and-flower decoration to the dedication of Diana's Memorial Fountain in 2004.

This ribbed apple green hat, one of the queen's favorite colors, was a more traditional shape, but featured a loosely looped and angled polka dot hatband and narrow yellow ribbon trim. She wore the hat on her Golden Jubilee Tour in 2002.

This rich ruby red satin hat featured a curved crown and severely downturned brim, with no hatband and several large cabbage roses. She wore this to the Cheltenham Festival in 2009.

In 2008, she wore this tall, brimless turquoise hat with jaunty black trim with a lovely matching turquoise coatdress with black fur trim. 

The queen was never afraid to mix two bold colors, as in this marvelous purple-and-aqua hat with asymmetrically upturned brim and frothy feather detail, worn in 2008. 

The 2010s

Elizabeth continued to wear broad-crowned, medium-brimmed hats, more frequently mixing colors or adding bold contrasting details, like this 2010 aqua hat with a wide crushed hatband and a large scarlet flower.

The brim of her hat was frequently trimmed in a contrasting color, as in this elegant yellow-and-beige hat with flat feather trim, which she wore in 2011 to grandson Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton.

Sometimes her hats had a fun retro feel, as in the 1950s style braided raffia hat, but trimmed with contemporary ribbon loops that made it very 2012.

Another 2012 hat, the asymmetrical crown of this white hat was covered with cobalt blue lace, and the brim was slightly downturned. 

This delightful ensemble reminds me of Wedgewood, with its soft blue kettlebrim base trimmed with dainty white accents to match the queen's coat. She wore this to a Service of Thanksgiving at St. Macartin's Cathedral in 2012. 

Another tilted hat featuring flowers both above and below the brim, the queen wore this stylish hat to the Royal Ascot in 2013.

A 2014 church outfit, this peach ensemble featured an asymmetrical crown, a large flat brim, and a spray of feathers across the front. 

One of my personal favorites, Elizabeth wore this jaunty periwinkle and aqua hat trimmed with a peacock feather tip on a state visit to Germany in 2015. 

Again in 2016, the queen wore a hat and coat with matching trim; in this case, a flat-brimmed green hat with a green-and-black boucle jacket, both trimmed with flat black lace.

Another of my favorites, this more casual grey wool kettle brim hat was trimmed with red along the edge of the brim and featured small tufted feathers in red, white, and grey right at the center front of the crown. Cheeky! And just right for the 2016 horse race it was worn at. 

Sometimes the queen used her outfit to carry a message, as in this yellow and blue dress topped with a blue coat and accessorized with a blue kettle brim hat decorated with blue daisies with yellow centers. The queen wore it to address Parliament in 2017, at the height of Brexit, and the flowers formed a circle that bore a distinct resemblance to the European Union flag, which features a circle of gold stars on a blue field. The queen is officially nonpartisan, but there was much speculation that her choice of couture was its own statement.

The 2020s

Sadly, Elizabeth was with us for only a few years in the 2020s, and made fewer public appearances, but she still made a statement with her hats when she did appear in public. She wore a powder-blue hat with asymmetrically upturned brim with black and orange accents and a fabulously knotted detail to the Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey in 2020.

Following the death of her beloved husband, Prince Philip, in April 2021, the queen aged noticeably, although she was still remarkably spry for a woman well into her 90s. Her fashion sense certainly never wavered, as demonstrated in this dark green woolen ensemble with rakishly tilted hat trimmed with feathers and loops.

The queen made one of her last public appearances, only two months before her death, watching the Trooping of the Colour parade from Buckingham Palace in June 2022. She wore a delicate lavender suit and matching hat, both trimmed with white lace. 

And how can I end this tribute with anything other than a picture of her wearing the "hat" that suited her best, that she wore so long and so well.

Rest in peace, Elizabeth. Rest in peace. 

References: 

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/style/fashion-trends/a37893721/queen-elizabeth-royal-hatmaker-milliner-rachel-trevor-morgan/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsTAm0iwvCU

https://www.mylondon.news/lifestyle/royal-family-queen-over-5000-23026971

https://www.itsrosy.com/The+Best+And+Worst+Royal+Hats+In+History

https://www.hatrealm.com/hats-worn-by-queen-elizabeth-ii-5-fascinating-facts/

https://theenchantedmanor.com/tag/queen-elizabeths-milliners/

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/jun/21/queens-hat-alludes-to-brexit