In The In Crowd Calliope Foster Millinery is doing well enough to give its sole employee, Callie, a tolerable living if she works 7 days a week.
When Callie meets DI Caius Beauchamp at the theatre
she is wearing a wide straw hat with silk monkshood flowers sewn into its burgundy band. (It is a coincidence that only three posts ago in Nightshade by Michael Connelly, the purple of nightshade flowers was featured. Monkshood is very much the same purple. While different species, nightshade and monkshood are often identified as the same flower.) Above and to the right are they type of hat I consider she was wearing and some monkshood flowers that would look wonderful on the band.
Callie lives in a world that still appreciates handwritten notes “landing on their doormat with a gentle thud and not in a text message with a ping”. She has personalised note cards printed for her and writes the notes with her “favourite fountain pen”.
She is uncertain she wants to expand her one woman business but answers the phone in the higher-pitched voice of the imaginary Amelia as “she pretended she had an assistant”.
Callie meets with clients individually. Penny is looking for a hat for her daughter’s summer wedding. She wants “something elegant, but distinct”. Callie suggests a pillbox.
In adding flowers to hats she considers the romantic meanings of flowers as defined in The Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway. Who knew “deep red roses mean ‘shame’ “ and Monkshood means “Knight Errant”?
Callie has an endearing quirk about her hats:
‘I give all my hats names like Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle. This is Petunia and this is Margot.’
It was not until this book that I learned the importance of hat blocks. For the equally uninformed they are carved wooden blocks to enable the milliner to shape a hat.
Callie loves vintage hat blocks and orders online German antique hat blocks. An example of vintage German hat blocks is above.
While Callie makes big hats for the big events she also makes small hats. The German antique hat blocks help her make cloches.
Sharon keeps hoping more women will wear hats but I cannot say I have observed a trend in women wearing hats. Pity.
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Bill, our heads were full of hats at the same moment, isn't that amazing?
ReplyDeleteThank you for the shoutout - as you know, I love a hat in a book, and feature them whenever I can.
This book sounds splendid, right up my street.
And good for Sharon for keeping hats going!
My own latest blogpost is on 'matron's hats' in books of the middle of the 20th Century.... https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2025/06/have-i-got-hats-for-you-matrons-and.html
Moira: Thanks for the comment. I am sure Sharon will keep wearing hats. There is a milliner in Saskatoon that has closed her shop but is still making hats at sovadesign.ca. She has designed hats for Sharon.
DeleteThis is a great post, Bill. And I'm so glad you mentioned Moira and her fine blog. Hats have been such an important part of what we wear for a long time, and they do play a role in fiction, as you show here. I may have to do a post on hats myself. You and Moira are inspiring me...
ReplyDeleteThanks Margot. I know you have hats of your own you could feature. I look forward to a post on hats in fiction and/or in your life.
DeleteBill, I was surprised to see this post about hats but I should not have been, because I remember you mentioning that Sharon likes hats earlier on the blog. Although I personally am not into hats, I don't understand why they are not more popular for women now. Here I have to wear some kind of hat if I go out in the sun, and I do have some nice broad brimmed ones, but mostly I wear baseball hats because the brim shades my eyes well too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment TracyK. I think hats can really make an outfit distinctive. Maybe some more women will hats as more than protection for the sun. I grew up wearing baseball caps and still wear them, partly because I sunburn very easily.
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