Contributed by Rosetta Marantz Cohen / Who doesn’t love a hat? Whether you wear them yourself or simply admire them on others, it is hard to deny that a beautiful, handmade hat is a marvelous object. As with all aesthetic creations, where hats sit on the continuum between high art and craft, sculpture and practical headwear, depends on the intention of the hatmaker and the predisposition of the viewer. Certainly there’s an argument to be made for giving certain hats their due as museum-worthy objects. Museums have long displayed all manner of objects intended for wear, from designer shoes to lavish evening gowns. The special display of hats currently on view at The Gallery at the Met Store makes the case that hats constitute a unique blend of high art and commodity. Situated unabashedly inside the museum store, the show is perfectly candid about what it is: a thoroughly delightful inventory of beautiful and artful yet wearable things, with prices attached.
The show, co-sponsored by the Gallery at The Met Store and the Milliners Guild of America, showcases the work of over thirty artists whose pieces range from the simply chic to the outrageous and extraordinary. It also highlights the winners of this year’s Mildred Blount Hat Competition, which singles out ten finalists from an international group of submissions and awards prizes for the most beautiful or inventive designs. Mildred Blount, who died in 1974, was responsible for many of the hats featured in blockbuster films like Gone with the Wind (including Vivien Leigh’s famous green velvet drapery hat) and remains one the few Black designers credited for her work during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Perhaps because hats are often intended for outside wear, makers of decorative ones have long drawn materials and imagery from nature. This year’s winning piece in the Blount competition, by Dutch designer Saar Snoek, is nautically themed. Built from glittery felt, it resembles an underwater sea creature with curled tentacles extending in every direction. Other lovely nature-inspired hats include a red fedora by Kathy Anderson, decorated with feather and lace poinsettias, and a platter-shaped hat by Sally Caswell, leopard-spotted and topped with two large burlap leaves. Netting and felt flowers cover a bright yellow bowl-hat by June Gumbel.
Other hats were designed explicitly around the theme of “Film into Fashion,” prompted directly by twentieth-century movies. Candy Warhol’s second-place design was inspired by the 1933 version of The Invisible Man: a white turban constructed of wrapped strips of cashmere that mimic post-operative gauze. Patrycja Grzesznik’s fascinator, entitled Cleopatra, is composed of metal-like shards, sequins, and wiry textile. It could easily have fit into Elizabeth Taylor’s costume wardrobe in the eponymous 1963 film. A gorgeous pink and black straw platter-hat by Mela Hoyt Heydon is called Milady de Winter after the Dumas femme fatale depicted in the 1948 film version of The Three Musketeers. Vintage and customized headwear, of course, remains a durably significant feature of dramatic entertainment. In the groundbreakingly exquisite German TV period drama Babylon Berlin, for instance, Gereon Rath’s fedora, front brim down, and Charlotte Ritter’s outsize cloche hat come to symbolize their heroic defiance in a disintegrating Weimar Republic.
The hatmakers and the patrons at the opening exhibit were a wonderfully diverse group: old and young, international and local, traditional East Siders and Gen-Z hipsters. Also present was Evetta Petty, the first African American designer to be invited to join the Royal Ascot Millinery Collective. She was wearing a bejeweled jacket and sash and a black sequined cap pierced by a rhinestone stickpin. She, like all those modelling their hats, looked like a work of art.
“Special Display: The Mildred Blount Hat Competition,” The Gallery at The Met Store, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY. Through October 30, 2024.
About the author: Rosetta Marantz Cohen is the Myra M. Sampson Professor Emerita at Smith College, and a painter.
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