Some real show "toppers" are among 50 hats from museum's permanent collection.
The new exhibition at Wm. McKinley Presidential Library & Museum — “Under Cover: Highlights from the Hat Collection" — is more than a history of headgear.
Admittedly, the exhibition, which opens Friday and will be on display until Oct. 21 in the museum's Keller Gallery, traces the evolving styles in hats through the handful of colorful 20th century decades that make up the "Golden Age" of hats.
"You are about to step into a world where a woman would never dream of leaving her house without a hat and gloves, even to run to the grocery store,” says an introductory text panel at the entrance to the exhibit. "During the 'Golden Age' of hats, women would often alter a design to go with a new outfit. Millinery shops featured the latest styles for each season."
Visitors to the exhibition also will be introduced, at least through their imagination, to the sense of style — outlook on life, really — of the women who wore the 50 hats chosen from the more than 600 hats in the museum's permanent collection.
"When we put the exhibition together, the idea was that these hats represented the personality of the wearers," said museum curator Kimberly Kenney. "With 50 hats we've got 50 different people who wore these hats. Some are traditional and some are outrageous."
Guest curator
Kathy Fleeher, former assistant curator at Canton Museum of Art and a volunteer at McKinley museum, is guest curator for the hats exhibition. She was helping Kenney catalog the hats when the idea to display them was born.
"I told her that the museum had a lot of wonderful hats," Fleeher said. "We saw that we had so many cool ones that we decided to show them off."
Fleeher said she has had "an affinity for hats" since the days she saw the older female members of her family wear hats on special occasions.
"My mom was a real fashion plate and she wore hats all the time," Fleeher recalled, noting occasions large and small once caused women to top off their attire with hats.
"Hats were accessories," she explained. "At times when clothing was simple, hats made outfits more flamboyant. Women styled them to bring a little life into clothing that might have been more austere."
Personal flair
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the stylishness of hats rests in the eyes of the women who wore them.
One of Fleeher's favorite hats in the "Under Cover" exhibition is a flamboyant display of fashion sense that provides a glimpse into the obviously outgoing personality of its previous owner.
"I'm intrigued by who owned it. It's completely filled with dangling lily of the valley," said Fleeher. "You have to wonder what woman bought this hat, what was she thinking when she bought it, and where was she planning to wear it after she bought it."
Out of style
History is also, by definition, in the past. In the past, as well, is the practice of wearing hats, Fleeher's research shows.
"After the 1960s, hats went out of fashion. People still wore them, but it wasn't as necessary as it was in the decades before," Fleeher explained. "But, it was not until the 1980s and 1990s, when fashion got more relaxed and people didn't dress up as much, that people stopped wearing hats."
Even Fleeher, one of the area's most knowledgeable proponents of hats, rarely wears hats as statements of her style.
"I do wear hats, but most of the time the hats I wear are not for fashion," she said. "They are sun hats or rain hats. They're hats that are more for function."
Others in the Stark County no doubt could echo her admission. That's why the "Under Cover" exhibition will be interesting and educational to visitors of the museum during summer, said Kenney.
"Even though we don't wear hats now, it will make people remember when people did and and make them recall people they knew who wore hats," said Kenney. "I think it will be interesting, as well, for young people who didn't grow up in a period when people wore hats to see some of the hats that once were considered to be fashionable."