If you’re following me on Facebook you may have seen a photo I posted this week of a lovely find I recently received in the mail- several years of bound Ladies Home Journal magazines. I have been itching to share some of the content with you, so today we’ve got hats and bonnets from the April, 1897 issue. The layout of this page made it quite hard to share a scan (the magazines are a large format), and the layout was bizarre with very small pictures, so I have transcribed the article here, complete with the remastered pictures a little larger than they appeared in the original.
The fashionable materials for this Easter’s hats and bonnets are chip, manilla, Leghorn, Neapolitan, Madagascar and English straw, and all the straw braids, especially those imitating satin. Black velvet is largely used for trimming with moiré and stain ribbons, deftly looped. Ostrich tips and long feathers are in vogue, though flowers are given preference over everything. The big Parma violets, as well as the enormous roses and poppies that were so generally used last season, continue to obtain, while camellias, tuberoses, white lilies, lilies-of-the-valley, blue hortensias, ragged robins and primroses are counted as quite new.
An extremely smart little bonnet (no. 1) is made of dull red straw, the front being turned back, exposing the hair, somewhat after the fashion of a Scotch cap. Very slightly to one side of the front is a bunch of black ostrich plumes, caught in place by a Rhinestone clasp. The simplicity of this bonnet is its special charm, while its style is cited to show that the woman who looks best when her hat is off her face has been considered. A little bonnet (No. 2), which may or may not have ties, has a small frame covered with a drapery of white satin embroidered with jet, turquoises, and silver spangles. It is raised on the left side and decorated with pink camellias and one large black silk poppy.
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