Table of Contents
A wide selection of hats and hairstyles for each year of the 1930s decade is shown in thumbnail form images.
1930s Hats
The wide brim and the high crown had been lost to almost a generation, however, in about 1934 milliners looked to Europe for inspiration. Hats in a much wider variety of styles than had been spied for well over a decade, were at last back in fashion.
| 1930 | 1930 | 1930 |
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Pert 1930s Hats
Perky hats with an Austrian or Cossack feel had an outdoor sporty appeal. In 1935 high crowned hats were tilted at a jaunty angle and had a flirtatious quality. They were small and pert and were contrasted with wider sailor style hats. One of the most typical styles that captures the era is the 'Florentine' hat.
Designers vied to produce shock value hats and Schiaparelli made a range of surreal zany hats that included the lamb chop/cutlet hat, the shoe hat and fruit basket hats.
| 1935 | 1936 | 1937 |
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The 30's Snood
Schiaparelli also introduced a Victorian revival in the form of the modern snood in 1935. The snood became a mainstay method of keeping hair free from machinery in wartime Britain. Since the snood was crocheted it was also easy to copy and knitting and crochet and tatting patterns appeared in magazines everywhere. Right - 1939 Snood
Meanwhile over in Hollywood Victorian themed films with lavish costumes like Gone with the Wind inspired a whole range of new hat styles for the 1930s.
Once the Second World War started hats became less practical as people had to rush to air raid shelters and they would literally drop everything. Barriers of etiquette became broken down and although hats were not rationed in order to boost morale their wearing decreased.
Hats that were worn were generally practical and often homemade knitted warm hats, berets and hoods. Fast hats were formed as women tied headscarves into and instant hat. Designers produced various new styles, but many only became universally popular after the war finished.
1930s Hair Styles & Hats Images
This page has over 100 images of 1930s hair and hats. Each of these thumbnails will enlarge into an A4 page of images of hairstyles and hats for the individual years of 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933-34, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1939.
The early1930's female silhouette was feminine. Although slender it had elegance and was not flat like the boyish lines of the 20s. Curves were back and these 1930's womanly curves were emphasised by the use of bias cut fabrics. Grooming of the face with now acceptable make up more artfully applied and pencil thin eyebrows together with a sleek upswept hairdo completed the thirties look.
Hats and Hair 1930-1935 | ||||
| 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933-1934 | 1935 |
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Click these thumbnails to enlarge each year of 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933-34, 1935, into an A4 page of images of hairstyles and hats. 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1939 are further down the page. | ||||
1930's millinery followed the mood of the day with curving styles often with romantic trims or witty hats that contrasted with the immaculately groomed look. Many 1930s hats were worn tilted to one side. As brims became flatter and wider so crowns lowered and by 1933 there was the hat style that was almost like a pancake panama.
Later hats such as the tall toques of 1937 and 1938 were made even higher with extra feathers. On occasion they were decorated with velvet petals or a mass of roses, violets or pretty clusters of lilies of the valley.
One of the most useful styles to emerge was the cache-misère turban which enabled the wearer to bundle away the hair on a bad hair day, but appear immaculately groomed and elegant.
Hats and Hair 1936-39 | |||
| 1936 | 1937 | 1938 | 1939 |
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| Click these thumbnails to enlarge each year of 1936, 1937, 1938 and 1939 into an A4 page of images of hairstyles and hats. | |||
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo's fashion style was imitated globally. In particular fans loved her shaded face make up known as the Garbo look. She often completed the enigmatic look with her famous slouch Fedora hat.
Other influential people included Parisian milliner Schiaparelli who loved to shock with her outrageous hat styles that echoed surrealism. She turned a shoe shape into hat styles and used pencils for hatpins. Some styles were amazing and echoed back to the days of Marie Antoinette and ships in hair.
Schiaparelli's version was a bird cage hat with canaries inside or a crown that was in reality a vanity case or a pin cushion hat or chimney pot. She had fun designing hats and her most famous is the shoe hat and the hat in the shape of a lamb chop. These fashion pictures went around the world.
Through the 1930s Paris remained the centre of hat fashion design and many important fashion house employed as many as 300 employees who solely worked on millinery tasks. But the costliness of Parisian hats also saw the American market producing hats with panache and well suited to its home ground.
Lilly Daché who worked in 1930s New York built up her Daché hat emporium. She was famed for her snoods and her silk flower decorated cocktail hats for evening. Her turbans designs and profile hats that highlighted the face were all the rage.
As the thirties drew to a close and as war approached new hat styles took on a military air with peaked caps, bicorn and tricorne effects. Many hat styles exhibit these elements on the next pages.
1930s Magazine Marie Claire History Cover Page Hat & Hair Images
Magazine covers are a rich source of information about hair styles, hats and make up as so often they focus on a headshot of the model. Back in the late 1930s when the now well known magazine Marie Claire was first published, this is exactly what happened.
Visitors often write to me with interesting bits of information. No one could ever today hope to read every word written on even their favourite subject, so I was very interested in the story about Marcelle Auclair that Dorothy wrote and told me more about.
She also sent me these lovely pages from the late 1930s which show both hats and hairstyles of 1937, 1938, 1939 and 1940. The Marie-Claire story that goes with them is printed below the images.
Today anyone interested in fashion is well aware of the magazine Marie Claire. It's not been around in UK anything like as long as in some other countries. At a guess I think its been on UK newsagent shelves for about 25 years. I certainly recall it in the early 1980s.
Marcelle Auclair co-founded the magazine Marie Claire. Dorothy Nixon has done extensive research on Auclair since all her books including autobiography are available in French, where Dorothy lives in Montreal.
Dorothy wrote to tell me about Marie Claire and the co-founder. She went on to tell me that ...
<<... Marie Claire Magazine today doesn't give Auclair ANY credit, but it could be said she created with Jean Prouvost, the modern women's magazine format - and according to Marcelle Auclair, the idea was hers in the first place. >>
Dorothy wrote and read out an essay on Marcelle Auclair for Canadian CBC. Here is the story she told me...
<<Marcelle Auclair got the job working for Prouvost (writing a beauty column) because Collette didn't meet her deadline. According to her autobiography she was the one who proposed a women's weekly to Prouvost who only agreed when she offered the idea elsewhere.
She and Prouvost visited the USA because she wanted Marie Claire to combine American Style features, with French Fashion Sense. The Magazine became an instant sensation. Lore has it they had to bring police in to keep women from overrunning kiosks each Wednesday in Paris.
Auclair wrote ALL the features in first 12 or so magazines, eventually keeping beauty and health. She and her husband writer and editor Jean Prevost were athletic, hence all the modern looking exercise features. They hobnobbed with St. Exupery and mingled with Sartre and de Beauvoir (whom she describes as a couple even poorer than her.)
...(v4r)A woman who was comfortable in a man's world, Auclair admits Prevost abused her during their relationship, especially when she was editing Marie Claire. She divorced him. They had three children, one of whom was a movie star, Francoise Prevost. He died working for the resistance during the war.
She was raised in Chile, born in France, Auclair wrote the definitive biography of St. Theresa of Avila and of other people and a lot of new age books about happiness Livre de Bonheur, which are still in print. Her editorials all have a new Age slant, she was into yoga and meditation in the 30's! She says she read every letter sent to Marie Claire for the advice column. Some of the advice she doled out was ironic, considering the state of her marriage. I believe she died in 1980.>>
Dorothy told me in another email that she liked the Auclair story and continued that...
<<.... because Marie Claire is still around and I believe, although I am not certain, that Prouvost's granddaughter still owns a lot of the French one. And on their website they mention nothing of Auclair as if Prouvost did it all himself. (He was indeed active in the publication... He also chose the name. Marie Claire was a novel, I believe. The magazine also features a number of stories by Academie Francaise writers, friends of Auclair.
I once contacted a grandson of Auclair, who is much more interested in mounting a documentary about his father.... He was perplexed about why Marie Claire didn't acknowledge her contribution. Plenty of people on the web do. I'm interested because she was such an intellectual, first rate journalist, but she said her favourite kind of writing was beauty writing. I think someone should make a movie about this couple, their story has all the elements. By the way, Francoise Prevost was a NEW WAVE actress; I temporarily forgot the name of the genre.... >>
My sincere thanks to Dorothy Nixon for this information and use of the lovely images she collects.
I hope you find that information as interesting as I did and also enjoy the lovely Marie Claire covers above on this page.
