Hodge’s Hats

PP has a weakness for vintage hats; for the past 10 years she has paid $300 a month to store her collection of 1950s hats. She sent me a picture of hat which is a cross between lime green and avocado, a cloche hat with a gold silk band. The interior is marked for Mousse HB, France, and the hat is designed by a famous milliner of the 1930-1960s, G. Howard Hodge (1893-1966). Mousse HB manufactured designs for many famous milliners, including Schiaparelli. I believe PP’s hat is likely from the late 1950s; similar hats by Mousse HB are listed for sale online from the late 1950s-1960s. This hat was purchased in its original hatbox in pink with the name of the designer on the lid and the name “Marshall Field’s, Chicago.” PP says she bought this green hat 20 years ago at a yard sale in Evanston.

I love Hodge’s hats (he was famous in the 1950s), along with hats by fellow designers Mr. John, Svend, John Frederic, and all great 1950s designers. Hodge, though, was the most prolific, designing for the Millinery Creators Group. They were a band of hat-making brothers, designers known for ‘ready to wear’ hats based on good quality materials. The materials could be raffia, furry felt (like PP’s hat), straw, artificial flowers, artificial fruit, taffeta, or lace – and the hats could be trimmed with anything from ribbons to rhinestones. 

PP’s hat is made of a unique, lightweight fabric, a felt which was made from rabbit hair. The inside of the hat is pure felt and the outside has been brushed to give the look of fur. And the green fur color is marvelous. What happened to hats? From the 14^th century on, a woman wore a hat – and women wore hats till the 1960s. I regret the loss, for the sake of a bad hair day, and also for the chance to complete a total outfit. PP writes that she has a reputation for always wearing a vintage hat from her collection at weddings and funerals. 

PP wonders where this hat was purchased and writes that Hodge’s hats were advertised at Chicago stores such as Goldblatt’s, Lords in downtown Evanston, Edgar A. Stevens in Highland Park, and Hats by Sue in Irving Park. Lytton’s Chapeaux Boutique on State Street in downtown Chicago carried Hodge’s hats. Gone are the days of local hat shops. And big department stores once featured a whole floor of hats, such as those at Marshall Field’s and Sears.

Why did these 1950s hat designers have such success? Target marketing: the secret was full page seasonal advertisements in a newspaper’s home and recipe section directed at women. A woman would find Easter hat advertisements beginning in March, and Christmas hats in September, and summer hats – wide brims – in May. PP found old copies of her hometown newspaper, The Chicago Tribune, and studied the hats they advertised over a season (1956). She lusts after a late 1950s red hat with dingle cherries made of felt in red on the crest, perching on a knob at the top of the hat. The Chicago Tribune’s article, the “Mode of the Day” says that for Spring, cherries on hats will be the RAGE. Marshall Field’s has a cherry hat advertised on March 8, 1956, for $29.99, and a full-page ad of cherries on various hats selling for $19.95 to $69.50 ($69.50 was an expensive hat: a house could cost $20K in 1956!) Flip the page and The Chicago Tribune shows a cherry hat from Sears, the cheaper department store, selling for $3.99. Flip again and Marshall Field’s special advertising column – called “The Fair”– shows drawings and photos of models wearing the season’s great hat designers: John Frederic, Vincent deKoven, Leslie James, Schiaparelli, Suzy Lee, Agnes, G. Howard Hodge, Adrienne, and John Andrews, and Russ Russell. Hats were big business.

As Spring was the season to sell hats, The Chicago Tribune in March published an advertisement of a fashion show of hats designed by the Parisian-trained Svend (his teacher was Jacques Fath), who designed in his native Denmark and Sweden. Svend came to Chicago to show his hats at Marshall Field’s on March 13, 1956. A ticket to see Svend and his hats at the ‘Walnut Room’ at the State Street Marshall Field’s was $1.50. Also advertised, we see that Svend appeared with his hats at the Sheraton Blackstone with his models, in a command runway show for 250 Chicago women. 

The hat by G. Howard Hodge is worth $75 but I would pay more!