Peach basket hat
{{Short description|Hat design resembling a basket of fruit}}
File:MabelNormandJamesMontgomeryFlag.jpg in a peach basket hat. Sketch by James Montgomery Flagg, 1909]]
A peach basket hat (sometimes called fruit basket hat{{cite news|title=Tell of Big Loss on Basket Hats: Milliners in Convention Declare this Form of Freak Gone Never to Return|url=http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1909/09/02/page/6/article/tell-of-big-loss-on-basket-hats|access-date=21 January 2015|publisher=Chicago Tribune|date=2 September 1909}}) is a millinery design that resembles an upturned country basket of the style typically used to collect fruit. Generally it is made of straw or similar material and it often has a trimming of flowers and ribbons. Some models may also feature a veil or draped fabric covering.{{cite book|last1=Brooks Picken|first1=Mary|title=A Dictionary of Costume and Fashion: Historic and Modern|date=2010|publisher=Dover Publications|location=United States|isbn=978-0486402949|pages=165|edition=1999|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CbOI4TCcnbQC&q=mary+brooks+picken+%2B+mushroom+hat&pg=PA165|access-date=6 January 2015}} It was introduced in around 1908 and caused some controversy over the succeeding year due to its extreme dimensions and decorations. It had revivals – designs were at this stage more modest – in the 1930s and 1950s.
History of the design
File:BlossomSeeleySmileWhiteHat.JPG in a peach basket style, 1912]]
The name peach basket hat became popularly used around 1908 in the United States. An advertisement in the Pittsburgh Gazette describes "the new Peach Basket Hats", also showing an illustration of a flower-decorated straw hat in the shape of a basket.{{cite news|title=All the new millinery! All the cleverest conceits! (advert)|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19090416&id=oP0aAAAAIBAJ&pg=5339,3542307|access-date=21 January 2015|publisher=Pittsburgh Gazette|date=16 April 1909}} While the term peach basket does not appear to have been used in the British fashion press, descriptions involving fruit baskets were. A 1908 comment piece in The Guardian by Evelyn Sharp described a variety of oversized designs, including one similar to Roundhead headgear, noting that they were: "hideously popular" and came trimmed with a variety of flower, fruit and bird motifs. Sharp added: "A basket of market produce pinned on the head would have much the same effect. For next to the difficulty of finding the head of the wearer underneath the hat of to-day comes the difficulty of finding hat shape under the trimming of to-day".{{cite news|last1=Sharp|first1=Evelyn|title=The Milliner's Market Garden|work=The Guardian|date=4 June 1908|ref=pg.14}}
A 1907 article in the American edition of Vogue had predicted that the future of hats was: "in size colossal" and, two years on, the magazine suggested that the growing popularity of photography had inspired many of these new millinery designs, as couturiers were exposed to images from other cultures and countries. The inspiration for the peach basket millinery design was said to be the oversized styles worn by women of the Congo.{{cite book|last1=Delis Hill|first1=Daniel|title=As Seen in Vogue: A Century of American Fashion in Advertising|date=2004|publisher=Texas Tech University Press|location=Lubbock, Texas|isbn=0896726169|page=168|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MvilOZhaRkAC&q=peach+basket+%2B+millinery&pg=PA168|access-date=21 January 2015}}
=Controversy and ridicule=
File:KayLaurellHeadAndSholdersProfile.jpg in an unusual high-crowned and fabric draped variation on the peach basket, c. 1910]]
Although the peach basket was launched as one of the 1908 season's new looks, it was not greeted with universal acclaim. The Los Angeles Herald reported in 1909 that the US National Association of Retail Milliners had "launched the aeroplane as the new style of headgear, put a ban on the peach basket hat and decreed the three-cornered hat of the Louis XVI period as the stunning bonnet for the coming winter months".{{cite news|title=Discard Peach Basket Hat for Aeroplane One|url=http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19091220.2.104|access-date=21 January 2015|agency=California Digital Newspaper Collection|publisher=Los Angeles Herald|date=20 December 1909|ref=vol. 37, number 80}} The milliners, who declared the peach basket (or fruit basket) dead, had suffered a poor season of sales. The association's president admitted: "The last season proved disastrous, short and unprofitable owing to the launching of extreme styles such as the fruit basket hat...a concerted effort has been made to tone down all attempts to introduce freak creations".
A further editorial in a New York newspaper said that husbands were partly responsible for the collapse in sales of the peach basket hat, with the manager of one Sea Cliff store reporting: "I have had no end of husbands come to the shop this spring in company with their wives to pick out their hats to prevent them from investing in a peach basket, washbasin or inverted bowl shape. Never before has so much fun been poked at millinery as this season".{{cite news|title=New censors of Millinery|url=http://fultonhistory.com/Newspapers%2021/Sea%20Cliff%20NY%20News/Sea%20Cliff%20NY%20News%20%201909-1911/Sea%20Cliff%20NY%20News%20%201909-1911%20-%200082.pdf|access-date=21 January 2015|agency=Fulton History|publisher=Sea Cliff NY News (from NY Sun)|date=1909}}
In its favour, the peach basket was said to have saved a New York showgirl from disfigurement. Beginning with "Here's a kind word at last for the peach basket hat", an article in the Los Angeles Herald went on to describe how a car passenger thrown head first through a car windshield was saved because her substantial peach basket hat exited before her, thereby saving her from skinning her nose.{{cite news|title=Peach basket hat saves pretty show girl's nose|url=http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19090518.2.122.8|access-date=21 January 2015|agency=California Digital Newspaper Collection|publisher=Los Angeles Herald|date=18 May 1909}}
= In popular culture =
In 1909, the short comedy film Flossie's New Peach Basket Hat, produced by Sigmund Lubin, was released.{{cite web|title=Guide to Motion Picture Catalogues: Series Two: Producers active after 1900|url=http://edison.rutgers.edu/mopix/rndetal2.htm|website=edison.rutgers.edu|publisher=Rutgers The Thomas Edison Papers|access-date=31 January 2015}}{{cite news|title=Amusements: Nickel's big weekend bill|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=38&dat=19090723&id=V5YjAAAAIBAJ&pg=2510,374037|access-date=31 January 2015|publisher=The St John Sun|date=23 July 1909}} In the same year, the song In a Peach Basket Hat Made for Two was composed by James M. Reilly and Henry W. Petrie.{{cite book|title=Catalog of Copyright Entries: Musical compositions, Part 3|date=1937|publisher=Library of Congress US Copyright Office|location=United States|page=151|edition=Vol 32, no.1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9UVjAAAAIAAJ&q=In+a+Peach+Basket+hat+made+for+two&pg=PA115|access-date=31 January 2015}}
Later revivals
File:Mariondavies.jpg in a peach-basket style design, unknown date]]
The design had a brief revival in the 1930s, with a fashion commentator noting that "as fetching a line as ever it was in pre-war days, the peach-basket hat returned this week to offer lively competition to the flat-crowned hats as spring's favorite millinery".{{cite news|title=A fancy springtime chapeau lends to springtime smartness|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19350331&id=XHAhAAAAIBAJ&pg=6163,6721501|access-date=21 January 2015|publisher=Reading Eagle|date=31 March 1935}} The article went on to describe a modified design of rough purple straw with a band of grosgrain ribbon and a bouquet of violets, as well as a classic peach basket with a navy straw brim and a tall tapering crown of leghorn straw dressed with flowers and a short veil. It was also a design that featured in the mid 1950s, usually in a simplified form but sometimes the straw frame was draped with soft fabric.
Although the term – and the classic peach-basket design – have not been widely seen since the 1950s, Princess Maria Laura of Belgium wore an organza hat described as a peach basket at the 2003 wedding of Prince Laurent of Belgium and Claire Coombs.{{CN|date=December 2021}}
See also
References
{{Reflist|2}}
External links
{{Sister project links|auto=y}}
- [http://fashionmuseum.fitnyc.edu/view/objects/asitem/760/16/dynasty-desc?t:state:flow=54f7119f-c5ae-4a8b-9453-3e65ecb7f8a0 Peach basket style in straw with lace, silk, velvet and flower trims at the Fashion Institute of Technology, c. 1908]
- [https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O521746/hiver-1934-35-ete-1935-fashion-design-worth/ Worth sketch of tea dress with peach-basket style hat at the Victoria & Albert Museum, 1934-5]
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