Ladies with Feather Hats Sepia Saturday 108 (Click Here to Sepia Site)



Ancestress of the hats

         Meet my  unknown ancestral ladies of the big  magnificent feather hats.  I have not been able to identify these women by name but the photo was with Rose's, my maternal grandmother's, small leather box of  family photos and I believe they have a limb somewhere in the Ostrowski (Ostroski) family tree.  They do not appear to be the simple immigrants from Poland nor the regular coal mining town relatives with hats like that; on the back someone wrote in pencil only, "Eastern girls"   How much farther east than Pennsylvania?  For a time I thought that the woman on the left could be Helen Sajikowski (Salkowski) my grandmother's step mother, third wife of her father, Frank.  After studying the  faces very closely I don't believe it is the same woman.  There is quite a bit of stunning detail on the dresses, seam work and  ornate fitted stitching.  The two appear  related.  But most of all, the hats are an untold  story, how heavy were they.  How straight did these women walk to carry a hat full of plumes atop their heads?  Where did they wear such headgear? 

So many questions and most of all who are they?  Did the photographer supply the hats to have their photo taken?  I know that happened in the earlier times when itinerant photographers supplied costumes for folks on the farms, hills,  small towns to adorn themselves. 

Here is a photo of Helen, my grandmother's step mother so you can compare; let me know what  you think.   Quite a lace collar that she sports atop her dress but no feathers,  nor hat.

"A hat is a flag, a shield, a bit of armor, and the badge of femininity. A hat is the difference between wearing clothes and wearing a costume; it's the difference between being dressed and being dressed up; it's the difference between looking adequate and looking your best. A hat is to be stylish in, to glow under, to flirt beneath, to make all others seem jealous over, and to make all men feel masculine about. A piece of magic is a hat." (Martha Sliter)

This last tidbit is from the Audubon Society Website:  At the turn of the last century, stylish women wore hats with the latest feather-topped design from Paris, New York, and other centers of fashion. Millinery houses in Europe and America traded internationally and indiscriminately for birds and bird feathers. The more exotic or unique the hat design and feather display, the larger the sales.   By the 1890s, women were wearing whole bodies of birds on hats and clothing. In 1886, noted ornithologist Frank Chapman counted 40 varieties of native birds, or bird parts, decorating three-fourths of the 700 ladies' hats that he had observed in New York City.

This has been my Sepia post for the week , click on the title to my post to visit the Sepia Saturday site, see Alan's feathery hat prompt for this week, visit other contributors in  our inernational community.  You will be tickled ....( sorry could not resist...)