Fashion Hats, 1920s

The Roaring Twenties: bobbed hair, dropped waistlines and short skirts; women smoking cigarettes and driving cars. Women of the 1920s adopted a boyishly tubular silhouette and covered their cropped hair with a close-fitting cloche hat in symbolic rejection of the previous image of femininity.

The chic cloche proved to be an ideal design for mass production: with a few snips, tucks and stitches by a skilled milliner, the hat was ready to wear.