Schuylkill County Historical Society display of post-WWII women's hats recalls bygone era of fashion

POTTSVILLE — When an estimated 150,000 people jam Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby today, speedy thoroughbreds and jockeys wearing their stable’s colors won’t be the only attraction.

Women’s hats have become as much a part of the derby as the bugler’s call to the post and the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home.”

Hats have pretty much gone out of fashion, except on special occasions like the Kentucky Derby, but there was a time when well-dressed women — men, too — wouldn’t have dreamt of going out without a hat.

A new exhibit at the Schuylkill County Historical Society recalls an era when women’s hats were in fashion.

In honor of Mother’s Day, the society is displaying about 20 fashionable hats from the post-World War II era.

Indeed, hats remained in fashion into the 1960s, when first lady Jackie Kennedy popularized the pillbox hat.

Diana Prosymchak, executive director, recalled her mother wearing a hat to church every Sunday at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Levittown.

“The top shelf of my mother’s walk-in closet was lined with hat boxes,” she said. “She had a lime green pillbox that she really loved to wear.”

The collection was donated to the society by Kristine Miller-Siple, of Orwigsburg.

The collection, she said, was largely assembled by her mother, Frances K. Miller, of Pottsville. Some of the hats belonged to Helen Weigand, also of Pottsville.

“These hats were worn to the Pottsville Club, weddings, night clubs and events in New York City,” said Miller-Siple, an artist and retired Pottsville Area High School art teacher. “I wanted to display these beautiful hats so people could reminisce.”

Styles represented in the collection range from bell-shaped French cloche to high-fashion turbans. There are fur hats, lamp shade hats and a bird’s nest hat that would be tempting to any self-respecting robin.

The hats are displayed with gloves, hat pins and original hat boxes from well-known Pottsville women’s clothing shops.

Pomeroy’s carried the Marche line of hats, displayed in a distinctive hexagon-shaped box. S. Pollack Inc., known primarily for furs, also sold hats.

Some of the hats were purchased at Hess’s in Allentown and Whitner’s in Reading, both fashionable department stores.