The Beginning of the End: My Vintage Hat Lot Purchase

So on my last post I talked a little about how long this lot of hats took to arrive. 12 days without a scan in the postal system. I thought all was lost. But then she arrived a few days after getting to Tennessee (aaaand going to the wrong town half way across the state) and I was elated! It arrived around 6 that evening so I barely had time to look through them and try a few on before dinner. Thankfully none of them were damaged from the long ass trip. So without further ado, here they are:

This one was the first one of the bunch that I wore out in public. We went to Walmart and then to the local grocery store for the best salad dressing that only they carry. Completely worth a separate trip. It was also the first time I had been out of the house in like 3 weeks. Not because of the corona virus or anything. Just cause I didn't want to go anywhere on my days off for a couple of weeks in a row. But now that I have my hats, I want to go out again. haha. Anywho, this one is straw or a straw like material and its more of a navy blue on the dark parts, but they look black in pictures. It also has a veil that ties in the back but I tucked it up underneath itself when I wore it. 

This one is an open pillbox style and the only one like that in this set. The top part of the veil has large leaves in black velvet draped across it. 

This one is a cream colored, textured helmet style hat. It has a veil draped across the top and it has a braided trim with little rhinestones dotted along the front. There is also a little pearl flower on one side. I reeeeeally like this shape of hat. 

And another of the same shape hat but in a deep burgundy. It had these spots in the front that looked like it used to have a veil attached. I like it plain, though, because I am not a fan of glasses with veils. Its a lot going on. And unfortunately velvet doesn't photograph extremely well sometimes, as you see here and will see on some of the others coming up. This looks like a hot mess in pictures, but is pretty lovely in person. And that's coming from someone who isn't a big fan of red.

Ok, so this is another velvet hat so please excuse the weird coloring. Its also kind of a halo like shape with a rather long veil off the back so I wasn't sure how to get a decent picture. Is that like the hat version of a mullet? Maybe if you could see it on someone's head it would look better...? I had actually thought about making a video on these hats while wearing them, just to show them on someone since sometimes it doesn't translate well into pictures without an actual head. Maybe I will someday. 

This one is kind of like a whimsey style hat because its very basic. Mainly just some velvet covered wire and a veil. The veil looks a little wonky (easily fixed with a blow dryer on low heat) but its in extremely good shape. It has little dingle balls on it. A lot of the hats in the lot have amazingly nice veils with little to no holes. The woman I bought them from said these all belonged to her fiance's mother and grandmother. Apparently they were pretty careful ladies. Only a few of these hats show much wear, so I can only imagine that they were the favorites that got a lot of wear time. 

This one I loved from the moment I saw it in the pictures on ebay and really love it now that its here. Its also a whimsey type, being mainly wire bent into a leaf shape on each side and then the flowers are draped across the wire. And they are all small paper lily of the valley flowers. I don't know why, but I love that they are paper flowers. It just seems so sweet to me. Its one of my favorites.

This one is one of two light blue ones that looked silver in the pictures and I was pleasantly surprised to find they were blue instead. I love me some blue. This hat is in the same shape like the others I really like, the helmet shape. Sometimes its also called a Juliette cap. Also sometimes called a half hat. See disclaimer at the bottom of this post. Anywho, its what I like. And this one is kind of low key crazy with the little pearl beads and the blue cording design and strange shape and of course the veil. Its a lot going on but all in the same shade of blue so its not all up in your face. 

This one is also one of my favorites because come on... Just look at it! It has these cool ass roses on one side and its open on the top and its a light blush pink color. The veil is also long enough to cover my face which most of them aren't. Not that I have a long face... I think. But a lot of vintage hat veils I have come across are only long enough for the eye area. That's a look, but not for me because of the glasses factor. Some of them are long enough to cover your whole face, which I like. I still will most likely tuck most of them up under the hat. I think a veil might be a bit much when out and about unless I am also wearing a dress.

I like this one a lot, but this is one of the ones that I think was worn a TON. It was and still is pretty dirty. The little hat 'ears' on the sides that help hold it on your head are pretty filthy. The veil was also pretty discolored, probably from makeup or sweat. I washed the veil carefully in the sink while still attached to the hat, but the hat itself is kind of a cream colored scrunched velvet. Is that a thing? Scrunched velvet? I tried taking a teensy bit of mild soapy water and a soft toothbrush to it, but with the weird scrunchiness it kind of looks strange where I did the test spot. I might do the whole thing and just live with the strangeness of the after cleaning look. And who knows, that could be how it looked originally. This look could be the result of years of wear and then years of storage. I really like this type of hat, also.

This one was pretty cute when I got to see it in person. Its a straw or straw like material with a cording and pearl twist in the front and this little cord knot in the back. I'm happy to have a red hat like this because a lot of vintage ladies in my vintage lovers groups (don't judge) love red accessories. Apparently besides white and black, red is a major color for accessories for recreating that authentic look. I think this hat would look pretty bitchin with these little red booties that my mom gave me. I don't know how vintage looking they look, but who cares! If the color is the same, I'm not gonna say no. 

This is my only green vintage hat (currently) and I really want a darker green one eventually. But this one is pretty cool because its velvet and its like a bonnet style in the front and a headband ish thing in the back. It sits on the head really nicely.

This one is so pretty and I liked it a lot in the listing pictures. Its in the same style I love but with a little part that juts out a little on one side in the front, as seen in the second picture on the left side. Its kind of asymmetrical, if you will. And the back has these pretty blue velvet bows which is so sweet looking. Plus, look at all the flowers! 

This is one of the two that looked silver in the listing pictures but turned out to be a light blue instead. Its like a velvety fur which is different and it has a stiff bow in the front with a blue feather tucked under it. It also has 3 small rhinestones on the bow, one of which was loose when it arrived, so I glued that bitch back down. It also had this really crappy looking veil across the top. I mean, this thing was weird...

See what I mean? It was all kinds of wonky and really brittle which was odd. It wasn't even just out of place, either. Its like someone added it on and didn't bother making it look nice. It was attached to where it would not go over the face at all or over the back of the hat. It was just weird. I made the difficult decision to remove the veil. I don't feel bad about it because it looks so much better now without it. And I can always add one on later, should I decide to. I probably won't though.

This one was pretty cool because it is like a piece of lace or crochet-ness. It has little balls all over the sides and some rhinestones glued randomly across the balls. The top reminds me of a spider web. Its in a pretty cream color, as are a lot of the hats in the lot. I wonder if the ladies had dark hair? I don't know how good they will look on my blonde hair, but I'm gonna try anyways. Again, the veil on this one is absolutely perfect.

This one is like a headband style which I like a lot, too. Its velvet in the back and sequins in the front. Although this veil looks wonky, its prefect, too. I haven't take the blow dryer to it yet. All you have to do it set it on a low setting and just blow the veil for a little bit. It straightens out in no time and all you had to do was use a hair dryer for a hot (ha) second. You can also reshape some hats that way. Like that cream colored lacey looking one. It was kind of dented in some weird areas. Just hold the dryer close to it (not touching it) for a min or two and then reshape it with your hands or put it on a mannequin head or something. I just used my hands to pop it back out. It took a couple of times or repeating that for it to stay fixed, but now its fixed! 

This is another headband style, but with feathers and flower petals. The front has a velvet band and then these black flower petals. At least I think that's what they are. I like the different colors in the feathers, too. I liked this more than I thought I would.

This was going to be my first hat that I was going to wear from this set. But the day we were going out to the store, it was a windy mofo. I chose the straw hat because I could use some hat pins on it. I could probably have used a hat pin on this one, but its pretty hard on the top. The little hat ears would have held it on somewhat, but since its a disc shape, I thought the wind might grab it and it might move around a bit. It has a cream colored feather tucked into the front bow thingy and it has some more of that velvety fur stuff on the top. I like that stuff because I was able to take a soft toothbrush and brush it going the wrong way (like petting a cat backwards) and then back the right way and now it looks fresh, not stuck down.  

I like this one a lot, but its hard to picture a scenario where I could wear it. I love that it has these semi sheer petals all over it with the little balls inside each one. Its crazy but so pretty. And of course that dark green bow, tho. I really like this one.

And this is the last one! The only crown I own. The lady I bought them from said that this crown was supposedly worn at a wedding in the 20's, I'm guessing by his grandmother. I can't find any information about crowns like this from the 20's but since they were all from the same family, I have no reason to disbelieve them. It does look pretty old. The veil is in mint condition and is only attached in one spot. She seemed to think it was supposed to be attached in a second spot, but I don't see anywhere where it might have pulled out and the veil doesn't have a spot in it that looks like it was attached to anything. Some of the veils from the other hats have a spot on them where it looks like they were attached to something. And other hats I have from other lots (to be shown soon) have ripped out spots so you can clearly tell where the veil was. This one is perfect.

So that's them! My large lot of hats. I have since gotten a few smaller lots and will post about them soon. But this is the majority of my collection. I do believe I am addicted... and I'm not unhappy about it!  #bringbackhats

**Disclaimer: Throughout this post I have called them by all sorts of names because as the Vintage Dancer put it:

 "Keep in mind each designer, retailer, region and individual women had different names of similar hats. For example, one of my 50s catalogs labeled a mushroom hat as a pillbox hat which was called a bumper in another catalog. There were so many styles of hats the names couldn’t keep it straight!"

So I did the best I could with the resources I have. That website, Vintage Dancer, is an amazing resource, btw. Really in depth on every single piece of an outfit and even places to buy reproduction versions, if you so desire.