Uneasy Heads: Difficulties with Royal Hats

Abstract

This article looks at two hundred years of British royal hats. We think of royal heads as crowned, though they are almost invariably hatted, and crowns haunt royal hats even when they are materially absent. It is unthinkable that the present Queen might preside at an official occasion bareheaded. Hats have had strong hierarchic, economic and social implications and, even if no longer mandatory, a hat is still a dramatic personal signature. For British royalty, whose image is public property, headgear must suggest not only style and glamour but also dignity of office. Royal men reached for military headgear to convey authority but, in time, this became camouflage. Queens, initially lacking impressive hats, appeared uncertain. But from the early twentieth century, as the monarchy became increasingly feminized, royal women, seeking a path between the imperatives of fashion and historical continuity, created memorable personal images — sometimes idiosyncratic, often enchanting — to which the hat was a final, distinctive flourish.