Fit for the Easter Parade

Today is Easter. For a lot of families, it has traditionally meant moms and daughters with new, matching dresses, a post-church parade home for a ham dinner, and, of course, hats.

I'm willing to wear just about anything vintage. I'll put on a flouncy 1950s dress with boots any time, and if you come to my house for dinner, chances are good I'll be in a Polynesian-print hostess gown. I won't flinch at wearing the rhinestone equivalent of 50 carats. But I have a hard time getting up the courage to wear a vintage hat.

For a long time, I thought it was because I didn't look good in hats, that I didn't have the fabled "hat head". Put just about any hat on Liz's head, for instance, and she looks terrific, but I have to try on a lot of hats before I find one that flatters. This week, though, I did find a hat--a 1950s black velvet hat with a long fringe--that did look good on me. If I'd seen someone in an old movie wearing the hat, I would have loved it. I had to face the fact that I am, in fact, like so many other people, afraid to wear a vintage hat. So much for Easter dressing.

It's time for me to bridge the great hat divide. One of Portland's rock royalty came into the Xtabay a month ago and bought a navy blue 1960s dress with a pleated flounce around the bottom and white trim. As she was paying, she reached up and plucked a white fur Hattie Carnegie hat from its stand, put it on, and said, "Add this, too." It would look terrific with her new dress at the party she was going to that evening. If she can do it, so can the rest of us.

--posted by Angie