"In Your Easter Bonnet, With All The Frills Upon It..." :-)

Out of all the hats, I always thought of Easter Hats as the most cheerful, playful and full of old world charm. They have the story behind them too, you know. Somewhere around 1870 New York started one of the most long lived traditions - Easter Parade. And with it came a new unwritten rule of showing off your new Spring fashion including new hats.

It became a tradition to wear hats decorated with almost insane amount of detail: ribbons, bows,lace, flowers and even birds nests! Never before Easter bonnet was a subject of such a fierce competition. :-)

Originally, Easter hats were much smaller in size and decorated with far more taste. Long before we started celebrating Easter women use to wear flower wreaths in celebration of Spring. With time round shape of the flower wreath transformed into hat. In both cases round shape remained as a symbol of Sun. Easter itself started a new wonderful tradition of wearing "your best". Each year just before Easter it was unthinkable for a lady to not to buy a new Easter hat.

To me a perfect example of beautiful Easter hats will always be hats by Schiaparelly and Christian Dior.

To those of you who celebrate this wonderful Holiday I would like to wish Happy Easter! :-)

In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it
You'll be the grandest gal in the Easter parade.

I'll be all in clover, and when they look us over

We'll be the proudest couple in the Easter parade.

--Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade" (1948)