Anecdotes from the Archives

Talking about hats

I have sometimes wondered about the history of hats at St Mary’s College, so I decided to go on a little walk down memory lane…

We would be right in assuming that hats were an essential part of women’s clothing in Victorian and Edwardian times, continuing on until the social changes of the 1960s.

However, the first picture of St Mary’s College students wearing hats that I have been able to find is the one below, from the yearbook of 1928, Apple Blossoms. This photo is captioned 'At the Sports'. In this photo students are dressed in box-pleat uniforms and shirt, their hats being of straw and with a wide turned-down brim.

A few years later, in the Weekly Courier of 28 May 1930, we find the photo below, captioned 'Young Enthusiasts from St Mary’s School', taken at an inter-girls’ schools sports day in Hobart. This time, the students are wearing felt cloche-style hats.

The next photo was taken at an Old Scholars’ Reunion in 1943, where the Prefects are wearing the felt hat, but now with a flat brim. As you can see, in the photo these are in line with the style of hats which the adults are wearing. Noooo, bring back those glorious cloche hats, I say, 80 years later.

Photos 4, 5 and 6 are further examples of the felt flat-brimmed hat, worn in 4 by Marian Campbell, a boarder, in 1949; in 5 by SMC students marching through the streets of Hobart on the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1950; and in 6 by Prefects in the Cathedral, also in 1950.

Photo 7, below, features in the 1963 Santa Maria and is captioned 'Three State Capitals 1963' and was taken as this group of students was making perhaps the first-ever interstate school trip. People of my vintage will recognise Deidre Kearney, Christine Shelton, Julianne Tapping, Anne-Mary Fagan, Lorraine Cooper, Merrilyn McNeil? and many others.

Sometime between 1943 and 1963 we obviously moved to the upturned brim on both the felt and straw hats, and these are the ones which I remember from my education at SMC. In my memory these hats lived on until the introduction of a loosely woven straw boater hat in the early 1990s (my daughter wore that one), which evolved into a smarter, more durable straw boater hat a few years later (she wore that one too).

Alas in the early 2000s, we saw the demise of the school hat altogether. Bring back the cloche felt hat for winter and the straw boater for summer I say!