Picked some of my favorite Victorian trade (advertising) cards for today’s topic of hats. This lovely lady to the left is an advertisement for “Heather’s Popular Dry & Fancy Goods Store” between 5th and 6th Avenues in NYC. She’s soooo serious!

I don’t wear hats much, unless I’m going to a costume thing, as with this steampunk cowgirl-themed event at the 2014 RWA conference. Purple cowgirl hat with rhinestones and feathers – what’s not to love? I used to have those little unsatisfactory white hats every year for Easter as a girl and one of my best friends gave me a blue velvet Dumas Three Musketeers hat years ago at a Ren Faire. Yes, complete with ostrich plume. I wish I were British sometimes because I’d love to wear those insane ‘fascinator’ hats that seem to defy gravity.

I have different hats; I’m a mother, I’m a woman, I’m a human being, I’m an artist and hopefully I’m an advocate. All of those plates are things I spin all the time.   Annie Lennox
A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel.   Philip Treacy

As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me.   Carly Simon

When I first became a lawyer, only 2% of the bar was women. People would always think I was a secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats.   Bella Abzug

I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.   Kevin Bacon

There’s a technicality to designing and wearing hats. A hat is balancing the proportions of your face; it’s like architecture or mathematics.   Philip Treacy

I own over ninety-five different hats and, over the years, have lost or given away 120 hats. You gain to lose… you lose to gain.  Theophilus London

All politicians should have 3 hats – one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.    Carl Sandburg

The only person I never made a hat for was my mother because my mother didn’t really – she preferred to make her own hats. I mean, she was intrigued by everything, but she didn’t want one of my hats. She made her own.   Philip Treacy

Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel.  Katharine Whitehorn

And sometimes a hat isn’t a hat at all! This lady was used to advertise a “tonic and dyspeptic” remedy that actually sounded pretty darn unpleasant in the advertising copy on the reverse side.