How about that hat!



Some say Aretha Franklin stole the fashion show at the presidential swearing-in with a big, glittery, dove-gray hat, adorned with the biggest bow ever. It’s certainly the talk of the Internet, and the Detroit milliner who made the $179 chapeau is being swamped with requests for a replica.

But this hat was more than a fashion statement.

Playwright Regina Taylor is the author of a musical called Crowns, about the tradition of wearing big, bold, and beautiful hats in the African American church, where such head coverings are indeed referred to as “crowns” and women who have a large collection of them are known as “hat queens.” Hat queens tend to be of an older generation, says Taylor. “But I see more young African American women wearing hats.”

In her research, she learned that these church hats have African roots: “Adorning one’s head for worship crossed the ocean from Africa and survived through slavery.” In West Africa’s Yoruba culture, she adds, a head covering had other roles. People believed that spirits could enter through a person’s head. Women would cover their head to keep out bad spirits—and invite in good ones.

As African slaves in America turned to Christianity, they found additional reason to keep the tradition. A passage in Corinthians states: “For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head.”

With no resources, slave women improvised. They would wear a wreath of flowers, or decorate a straw hat they used for work.

Eventually, the African American community began to mix fashion and faith with elaborate hats. “Black women tried to take it to a whole other level,” Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, a history professor, has written. “The church was a place where black women's moral character, beauty, [and] style was openly recognized and appreciated. At church a black woman could walk down the aisle holding her head up high topped with a fancy and heavily decorated hat and wearing a style that reflected her African American heritage.”

The hat also reflected the wearer’s personality “It is an expression and celebration of the soul, and of the individual’s spirit,” says Taylor. “Some women may wear a small pillbox hat. People who go big, with bells and whistles—that’s who they are.”

As for Aretha’s bow, she says, “Miss Aretha is a gift, so of course she would have a sparkling bow.”

Photographer Michael Cunningham, coauthor of the book Crowns, which shows off dozens of hats and is the inspiration for Taylor’s play, sums up the Hat That Upstaged Obama: It shows respect to God. It shows that Aretha Franklin is both a prosperous woman and one who’s unafraid to take fashion risks. And it kept her head warm on a very chilly day. “It’s a triple threat.”

- Marc Silver

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