Victoria & Albert Museum

Hats: An Anthology (pdf), a collaboration between Stephen Jones and the V&A . The exhibition will display more than 300 hats chosen with the expert eye of a milliner. On display will be hats ranging from an Egyptian Anubis mask dating from 600BC to a 1950s Balenciaga hat and couture creations by Jones and his contemporaries. To show the universal appeal and delight of wearing hats, Jones has included a wide variety of styles including top hats, berets and a child's plastic tiara." Also includes an interesting resources page.

Hats of Jerusalem

'Perhaps if people wore hats, everything would be better, like it used to be, when everything was simpler, when everyone owned a hat.' Nothing was ever simple about the role of the hat among Jews or anyone else, as this extraordinary series of videos reveals.

Hat-Pins

An important accessory in the Victorian era, pins were used to secure those large hats in place. The Society of Great Britain has some useful information, as does the American Hatpin Society. Google images and Flickr have some good photos.

The Hat Site

The Hat Site is another trade site, but with quite a few useful links, including Books on Hats, hat care, sizing, etc.

YAKKAY

Heidi recommends the YAKKAY helmet cover, a great idea for customizing boring headgear.

Hats in the News

MSM looks at the renewed interest in hats.

The Haberdasher's Guild

The wonderful HJ in Brussels captured this image from the Maison du Renard, the house of the haberdasher's guild.

Cap In Hand

From the custom of uncovering the head (abridged to ‘raising’ or merely ‘touching’ the cap) in sign of reverence, respect, or courtesy, come many expressions, such as to come with cap in hand, also cap-in-hand, attrib. phr., with cap and knee, bareheaded and bowing or kneeling, with cap and courtship, or cap and curtsey; and also the contextual use of cap, for the raising of the cap, respectful salute.

1600 HOLLAND Livy IX. xx. 328 They..importuned them..with cap and cursie.

1889 C. M. YONGE in Monthly Packet Xmas 33, I don't care for those cap-in-hand ways of your people here. OED

International Hats

Professional travel photographer David Sanger has a nice portfolio of hats from around the world.

Hatless Jack

Neil Steinberg's Hatless Jack is a quick read full of interesting anecdotes that exhaustively covers the rise and fall of hat fashion in America. What's really useful is its excellent bibliography.

Hats in Art History

The Village Hat Shop has a nice selection of images of hats in Western art.

Google Hats

There are a remarkable number of works on hats available through Google Books, some with just the bibliographic information but many full text, out of print works too.

To Hat

The indispensable Oxford English Dictionary reveals the history of Hat as a verb:

a. trans. To cover with a hat; to furnish or provide with a hat. Also, to bestow the cardinal's hat upon.
c1430 Pilgr. Lyf Manhode II. cxxii. (1869) 121 Al be it I be mantelled and wel hatted. 1598 FLORIO, Incapellare..to hat one. 1852 W. JERDAN Autobiog. II. xiii. 164 We had..hatted and cloaked ourselves. 1885 Boston (Mass.) Jrnl. 31 July 1/6 The Pope..held a public consistory..at which the newly appointed Cardinals were hatted. 1891 A. THOMAS That Affair I. x. 171 Miss Polthuan hats and veils herself.

b. To place one's hat on (a seat) so as to claim it.
1886 Philad. Times 10 Apr. (Cent.), Twenty seats had..been hatted before noon to secure them for the debate.

c. intr. To work alone. (Cf. HATTER n. 2.) Austral.
1891 Age 25 Nov. 6/7 (Morris), Two old miners have been..hatting for gold amongst the old alluvial gullies. 1900 H. LAWSON On Track 88 And he ‘hatted’ and brooded over it till he went ratty. ref

Les Catherinettes

Saint Catherine is popularly, but not officially, the patron saint of: 'philosophers, students and people of learning; wheelwrights, potters, millers, engineers; women without power (maids, servants, virgins, prostitutes, spinsters), nurses, doctors and the dying.' The monastary on Mount Sinai is named for her, as is a chapel in Abbotsbury which inspired PJ Harvey. She earlier inspired the medieval French tradition of Les Catherinettes. Women who had reached the age of twenty-five unmarried would place a cap on a statue of St. Catherine to invoke her blessing. This evolved into the wearing of elaborate hats on her feast day, November 25, and parading through Paris. An extraordinary video shows be-hatted women, carrying hat boxes(?), racing to meet the regal Josephine Baker (who definitely knew how to wear a hat herself) at the finish line.

Books About Hats

The Village Hat Shop has a good list of book resources. They might be available through a library near you.