Miss Pye’s Hats

As Royal Ascot is in June our Curator, Alex, has chosen for this month these beautiful 1920’s cloche hats from the museum’s Miss Pye collection.  Miss Pye lived in Langham House on Hadham Road from the age of six until her death in 1996.  She was a strong supporter of the museum and left many of her possessions to the Local History Museum; recording her Edwardian childhood and life as a young woman.

The cloche hat was invented in 1908 by milliner Caroline Reboux.  Its name derived from cloche, the French word for bell. Adornments of feathers and applique were common and the upturned brim became trendy in the late 1920’s.  They went out of fashion around 1934 but were briefly in again in the 1960’s, the 1980’s and during 2007.

Being very much a woman of her time, Miss Pye was a true fashionista and socialite who was known to be never without a hat.  She is pictured below during the opening of the Gilbey room of the Local History M Museum at the Cemetery Lodge in 1991 – with, of course, a hat on.  Visit our Miss Pye gallery on the second floor of the museum to see these and her other fashionable accessories.