Two hundred and sixty dollars were paid this season for a hat!
I know this to be true, because I saw the hat and the woman who
bought it, and I was told the price. What was it? A handful of
straw, a wisp of tulle, and a spray of feather. Two hundred and
sixty dollars!
Of course, this is not to be taken as an average price, even
among the very rich. But the averages, as well as the single,
instances of modern extravagance are startling. Fifteen years
ago twenty-five dollars--thirty at the outside--would have
bought the most elaborate bonnet in the most expensive shopping
center of the world, New York. To-day the Fifth Avenue shops are
asking thirty dollars for the plainest domestic toque or shade
hat, and have shelves full of French importations at prices
ranging from $100 to $175. The ten-dollar “trimmed” sailor hat
used to be worn with serge dresses; the mull hats costing five
dollars; the big rough garden hats at about the same price;
the leghorns that used to run as high as fifteen, even twenty
dollars, to-day have been replaced by thirty-dollar round hats,
fifty-dollar picture hats, fifty-dollar lingerie hats, and
hand-made straws running into the three numerals.--EMILY
POST, _Everybody’s Magazine_.
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