Dua Lipa’s wedding look has brought the wide-brimmed hat back into focus, reviving a vintage bridal trend just as summer wedding season begins. From her Schiaparelli skirt suit to the gold-lined hat by British milliner Stephen Jones, the ensemble nodded to Bianca Jagger’s iconic 1971 wedding look while renewing interest in statement millinery.
Lipa’s bridal style — especially the wide-brimmed hat — has been a favorite of hat lovers for decades. Looking back into the Women’s Wear Daily archives, the iconic wide-brimmed beauty has always been a statement maker on and off the runway and beyond providing shade in the summer months.
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Millinery’s popularity can be traced back decades, but the demand for this style of hat can easily be connected to the early 1900s, when the Edwardian fashion, closely tied to the Gilded Age, and the slimmer S-curved feminine silhouette brought wide-brimmed hats into vogue. The brim of the hat, a palette for adornments of fruit, silk ribbons and plumage, was a requirement of the costume of the day. The style was a favorite amongst milliners and consumers alike for taking fashion strolls, trips to the beach, and, of course, weddings, and it would remain popular into the 1970s.
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Early influencers included Hollywood celebrities such as May West; her hats were iconic for their glamorous plumage. Rita Hayworth and Kathrine Hepburn often donned hats in straw and Audrey Hepburn, whose black lampshade capeline, designed by Hubert de Givenchy, gave wide-brimmed hats cinema-worthy chic in “Breakfast at Tiffany” in the 1960s.
Wide-brimmed hats would be refashioned in later decades but retained there statement making drama. Style purveyors in the 1970s — Cher, Janis Joplin and Bianca Jagger — would give the hat street credibility in the decade where individual style was the trend. Adding to the moment were two now iconic films: “Cabaret” with model Marisa Berenson and “Mahogany” starring Diana Ross.
The style’s appeal has endured for hat lovers, continuing to take up the scene at weddings, garden parties and the beach. From Edwardian elegance to Dua Lipa’s statement-making wedding style, wide-brimmed hats continue to delight in dramatic style. While media and fans alike wait in anticipation to see what and who she will be wearing during her upcoming nuptials in Palermo, Italy this weekend, here is a look back at statement-making wide-brimmed hats, a must-have summer accessory from the Fairchild Archives.