Cloche Hats

Some hat styles are always on-trend and the cloche is one of them. The popularity of period television shows, such as Downton Abbey (above) and Peaky Blinders, have definitely stoked fresh interest in retro fashion styles and cloche hats have been at the forefront of the vintage revival.

A Brief History of the Cloche

Cloche hats have been worn by women for more than a hundred years. Around the turn of the twentieth century, hats had grown to absurdly large proportions with dramatic trimmings. As the use of automobiles and public transport increased, these big hats became more and more impractical. While a cloche may make you think of the roaring twenties, it was during this earlier period when the style was first introduced in Paris.

Fashion historians don’t all agree on exactly who designed the first cloche, but it is generally accepted that two different French milliners, Caroline Reboux and Lucy Hamar, both began creating bell-shaped hats sometime between 1908 and 1914. Without a doubt, though, it was Reboux who popularised this simple and easy to wear style. She was especially famous for her free-form, draped cloches. Apparently, she would measure the felt for these designs right on her clients’ heads!

By the end of World War I, the tightly fitting cloche had become extremely popular. Many women were cutting their hair into short bobs and cloche hats paired with these hairstyles perfectly. The cloche is most often aligned with the flapper style. ‘Flappers’ embraced short shirts, bobbed hair and a disdain for stuffy social norms. These hats would be worn low over the eyebrows, causing the wearers to walk with their chin tilted up, peering down their nose to see. This helped to give these modern young women an alluring and slightly snobby look.

Art Deco was popular in this era and that aesthetic carried over to the embellishment of hats. Cloches would often be decorated with beads, appliques or brooches. Cloche hats were made from a variety of materials, with felt being the most typical. The more glamorous designs, however, were made from silk or lace fabrics to top off evening ensembles.

Although the cloche hat had become much less popular by the 1930s, it had a resurgence in the 1960s when stars like Audrey Hepburn and Twiggy were photographed in them. The fashions of that period had simple lines that worked well with this hat shape. Cloches in this period tended to be looser fitting with a wider brim.

Over the years, many of the great fashion houses, such as Lanvin and Dior, have incorporated cloche hats into their collections. The simple shape of this versatile design makes it easy to style these hats with a variety of outfits. For instance, the Fall 2008 Couture Dior Collection, pictured above, notably included several elegant and modern cloches with flowing lines and unique materials and trimmings. See the full collection at www.vogue.com.

Making Your Own Cloche Hats

For those wanting to make their own hats, the cloche is a great style to start with. These hats can often be blocked-in-one, a blocking technique which is perfect for beginners, on a specially made cloche block. Alternatively, to achieve a more asymmetrical, free-form look, you can hand-drape a cloche hat on a dolly head (poupée) or standard dome block. There are also many fabric cloche sewing patterns which don’t require any blocking at all. You can find Mary Jane Baxter’s simple instructions for making Bloomsbury Belle cloches (above) in HATalk Issue 133.

If you do try your hand at making a cloche hat, we’d love to see the result. Please email photos to mail@hatalk.com!

About the Author

Amy Fowler is the creator of the bespoke, California-based Millinery by Amy Fowler label. She also runs Humboldt Haberdashery, an online millinery supplier.

See Amy’s full bio HERE.