Milliner

This term is used to refer in general to professionals who create, construct or decorate hats for women, in the most varied forms and textiles, in particular styles, felt or straw. Almost till the end of the eighteenth century, the term was generic and included not only the true milliner but also people who worked with any sort of material related to clothing and those involved in its sale, from mercers to makers of ribbons, lace, and buttons and bows. It was not until the end of that century, with the rediscovery of the hat and the end of the fashion for very high, powdered wigs, that an appropriate statute ratified the corporation of milliners in France (1776), their right to make, as well as to dye and decorate with artificial flowers, women’s hats. This was the premise for creative hat fashions that swiftly changed to match hairstyles, adapting their size to suit curls, fringes, and bandeaux. Hats have had moments of obscurity and also euphoria, often definitively characterizing particular periods in fashion: the very large hats of the early twentieth century, laden with fruit and flowers, so important that women used to wear them indoors or at the theater in the afternoon, to the caps drawn down over the eyes of the female stars of the 1930s, to the cloches of Greta Garbo. The milliner began to work closely with haute couture. Some of the most famous designers began as milliners, such as Coco Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin. In more recent times, as fashion has become an increasingly powerful phenomenon, the hat has not always enjoyed parallel fortunes, apart from the return of the fur hat or the men’s felt hat in the 1970s. This changed in the 1980s, when various revivals used hats to complete a particular look.