Millinery 1909 — The Merry Widow The Mushroom

CLIPPED FROM
The Lanark Era
Lanark, Ontario, Canada05 Oct 1904, Wed • Page 1

**Marion Umpherson Prentice in front of her shop.**

It is easy for one to sit behind the plate glass and make mind bets on the success of the millinery openings. Some deductions are obvious. The ladies and bachelors seem to get the greatest pleasure from the occasion. In fact the particular position which’ each person occupies in the social structure of the town is portrayed in their attitude on those exciting epochs .

When the fashion bonded public for the first time this Spring we wonder whether the Merry Widow or the Charlotte Corday, or some new favourite is to occupy the highest places for the present. The fluttering excitement of the maiden, the self poise of the matron, veteran of many campaigns, the cynical smile of the bachelor, society’s excess baggage and the thinly-veiled uneasiness of the heads of families—all pass in review before us. Judging from appearance hats are going to be very amicably worn.

The extreme horizon of the Happy World has been more or less contracted—so much so in fact that it will scarcely be necessary for ordinary men to carry a package of court plaster tor the purpose of repairing their damaged features in future. There is a new , favourite: “ The Mushroom.” It does not resemble the common or garden vegetable much, except in the name. It may be that the title was derived from the fact that with one of them in the house there isn’t “mushroom” for anything else.

Some people like to try on hats, some people don’t. It depends a good deal on how they look, but the ones who do not feel quite satisfied have the satisfaction of knowing; that they didn’t have their hair fixed right. Let it be understood that while the fans of the immediate future seem to a tenderfoot, to have shrunk slightly, there is still sufficient to them to prevent the summer’s sun making freckles on the end of the nose.

March 1909 Lanark Era

The fashion designer Lucile had designed the original widow hat for an operetta in 1907, but it influenced hat fashions for many more years.
The Merry Widow hat was always black and encased in filmy chiffon or organdie and festooned in feathers.