A sheer hat for April, 1917. Delineator magazine, editorial illustration.
Just for fun, here’s a sampling of women’s hats from the Spring of 1917. All images are from Delineator magazine’s April, 1917, issue.
Go bold! (And watch out for low doorways.)
Lace hat, April 1917. Delineator.
Lace is always fun and feminine. Wearing a bag on your head? Only for the bold.
It’s hard to go wrong with flowers . . .
. . . or fruit.
Appliqued embroidery is elegant, and you can’t have too many roses. Or you could take your inspiration from a marching band:
And don’t be afraid of height:
Or of width. The people behind you probably don’t want to see anything, anyway.
Hats featured in this Delineator article, April, 1917, fit close to the head instead of being anchored to a mass of hair with long hatpins: “The hatpin is merely a trimming.”
“You will notice how low the hats are worn on the head.”
“A high hat, but notice how skillfully the straw lace is used to lighten it.”
“The hat with the halo will suit any of our latter-day saints, especially the worldly ones.” — Delineator editorial comment, April 1917
You can borrow your hat ideas from the men . . .
Or be as prettily pink — or green — as you like:
Just don’t get too matchy-matchy, no matter how much you love that blue and white print:
Matching skirt, bag, and hat, Butterick’s Delineator magazine, April 1917.
Happy Holidays!
For those who’d like to see more of the outfits worn with some of these hats:
witness2fashion 
These hats are fun, but they mainly make me glad that hats were out of style by the time I arrived on the fashion scene.
A hat can feel very glamorous, but there’s always the problem of “hat hair.” There used to be a rule that ladies kept their hats on in restaurants and men removed theirs, but as soon as men and women stopped wearing close-to-the-head hairstyles, taking off your hat left a squashed area. I can’t account for the popularity of baseball caps, but men started wearing them indoors very quickly, in defiance of etiquette. I sometimes think resistance to wearing bicycle helmets is mostly caused by the way they make your hair look when you take them off! Vanity trumps common sense, again.
As big as some of these hats look, I’ve been browsing through a 1912 catalog and the hats just five years earlier make these seem tiny! It’s amazing how quickly styles change.
Equally amazing is how long a highly impractical style can last — like those 1912-ish hats.
Pingback: Cutting the Cost of Clothes, March 1917 | witness2fashion
Pingback: Home Made Hats, 1917; Part 1 | witness2fashion
Pingback: Copies of Store-Bought Hats, 1917 | witness2fashion
Pingback: High Neck or Open Necked Options for Women, 1917 | witness2fashion
could i have this full magazine of this \https://witness2fashion.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/1917-april-p-72-top-hats.jpg
Delineator magazine for January through June 1917 has been digitized by the Hathi Trust. I hope you can find the April 1917 issue by clicking this link.
I am not a library or a business — I have to go to my library, which has physical copies of these magazines, and take pictures with my camera. The images you will find online at the Hathi Trust are not as good, but they have scanned many years of the entire magazine and you can find digital images of every page.
The year 1917 can be found as two volumes, Vol. 90 and 91. You will have to scroll down through January, February, and March, to reach the April issue. Do not be discouraged if the first screens you see are blank or the first screen says “Page not available.” just scroll down through the blank pages and you will come to the cover of January 1917.
well thank for the website but there is a problem they didnt show the colored image like this page
Research is easier than it used to be, but it’s still never easy to find exactly what you need. At least now you can use the Hathi Trust website to read the pattern descriptions for that nice color photo you found elsewhere — but don’t expect to find hat descriptions: Butterick was advertising its dress patterns in Delineator. However, sometimes Delineator did write articles about hats. See the April issue, pages 62 and 63.
Yep but all i needed is this full magazine page
to save into my collection