Yesterday, I was in someone’s office for a few minutes. I had on my grey hat, the one with the small poms on the side, and I was wearing my “coat scarf” as well. It was cold outside, but not as cold as it has been over the past week or so. At 35 degrees, it felt downright warm if one stood in the right place! Although the grey hat is a new addition to my collection of various hats, it’s a new favorite as well, probably because it goes with nearly everything I own. When one wears a lot of black with colored accents, grey is a good choice most of the time. Hats have two functions for me: (1) keeping my head warm, and (2) calming my curly out-of-control hair that tends to have its own life apart from mine. My curly hair is so much a part of my personality that people seriously treat me differently when I have it straightened. It really freaks them out, and it’s truly a treat for me.

The person I was meeting with commented that he liked my hat, and that it looked very 20s, as in the 1920s, the height of fashion to a certain degree, at least in my opinion. Not much of a lace person, but definitely more of a flapper, I love the style of the 20s. It was also a great and boisterous time in the nation’s history, just before the Great Depression, prior to WWII, and just after breaking out from WWI and the more-cloistered styles of the times just prior. It seems like it would have been a lot of fun to live then, if only for a time traveler, I mean to avoid the oncoming days of the rest of the first half of the 20th Century and all.

I love history, you see, and I love to read. Some of my favorite books are those historical fiction books, along with well-written biographies and autobiographies from folks who lived long ago. Sometimes I’ll delve into a biography of a modern-day person, but it’s just not the same, since I feel like I know those people already. For most of them, there are nuggets that we don’t know since we aren’t all personal friends with, say, Rob Lowe, but it’s just not the same as those folks who helped shape my grandparents’, my parents’, and friends’ lives, along with my own. Those who set the stage, so to speak, by forging through some pretty tough but amazingly spectacular times as the US and other countries got up and going with the start of that era.

It’s been nearly a century, with this being 2018, that all of that started. 100 years ago, we were in the midst of a world war, with the Doughboys fighting for freedoms and to thwart the taking of lands, and promoting the recapture of others. The more modest, or prudish – your choice of terms here, times led to the magical uproar of the 20s, when parties, fun, and money-making was king.

My grandmother was a seamstress in Philadelphia in WWII, while my grandfather was stationed in Philly as part of his duties in the Navy, prior to being shipped out to the Pacific. She used to speak fondly of those times, when she was working in a huge factory alongside many other women, some of whom were deaf. She learned a bit of sign language, and taught me the alphabet one summer. I still know most of the letters, but I don’t remember some of the more complicated items, and I retained very few actual words. I was probably 11 or 12 that summer, and if I clench my fist with my thumb on the outside, I always want to move on to “B”, even after all of these years. I stayed with her many times over the summers when I was growing up, and I would cry nearly all the way home, knowing that I would miss her dearly, and miss most of all the time we spent together, learning sign language, eating Neapolitan ice cream, reading the newspaper, watching Archie Bunker and The Jeffersons, and sleeping by the sound of the window air conditioner in the living room. She also taught me a lot about history, telling me the stories of her ancestors’ arrival into the US, also via Philly, and how it was to live through the Greats – War, Depression, Civil Rights, and Sexual Revolution. All of those discussions sparked my interest of history and ancestry, loves that I have to this day.

One time that summer she and I went to the fabric store. Although I’m sure that we went many times, I only truly remember the one, for that time, we purchased the fabric and fringe that would be come my Flapper Dress. With curly blonde-brown hair, a petite figure, and a big smile, I felt reincarnated that summer. Reincarnated as a flapper again, after 60 years.

Never one to use a real pattern, she simply measured, cut, sewed, and tucked that fabric to make my dress. The fringe and the dress were black, probably because back then it was easier to find black fringe than all of the colors they have in the stores now. I waited impatiently as the dress came to life, with her weaving and bobbing on that old Singer heavy-as-an-anvil sewing machine in the cabinet. It was powered, and it could sew like the devil. (Sidenote: today’s machines with their automatic buttons and intricate parts have nothing on this machine!). Finally, the creation was complete, and I was reborn as a flapper.

I loved that dress. I wore it on and off all summer, and I even wore it when I brought it back home. I’m sure it had tear stains from the crying in the car. I would swish and swirl, with those fringe pieces just jutting and strutting their way around the room. I felt transformed, and I didn’t care that my friends thought strange my obsessions with all things 20. Of course, I eventually outgrew the flapper dress, as I have many other pieces of memorable clothing over the years. But, unlike much of those other items, I’ve never missed an article of clothing as much as that dress. I still do.

My hat collection started when I was about 23 or so, from what I recall. My father-in-law, who I absolutely adored, bought me the burgundy one on the end, as a gift for Christmas one year. Although I’m not sure who actually purchased the hat – he or my mother-in-law, the box tag had his name on it when I opened it that year. I’ve worn it many times since. Then came my “Paddington” hat, the brown one on the far right in the photo attached to this post. I paid $27 for it in Eureka Springs in about 1999-2000 or so, $27 I really didn’t have to spend but spent anyway because I loved the hat that much. That it is still in my bonnet arsenal is a testament to the longevity of that particular purchase. In other words, I was a good investment.

The black hat with the flowers was a gift from my husband for Christmas a few years ago. That chapeau has accompanied us to Paris, where I wore it while gazing lovingly at the sunset over the Seine and the Eiffel Tower on our last day in the city. The grey one was a purchase this year just after Christmas, on sale and much-loved.

There is something about these 20s-inspired hats that take me back to that summer so long ago, and make me smile, recalling those memories of ancestry, history, and “better times” as Mamaw would say. I have always felt as if I am an old soul in a new body, more mature for my age growing up than most, feeling as if I’d already lived some of those adventures and didn’t need to experiment with them again. Feeling as well like a person who knew what was to come, which I know sounds strange, but my gift of prediction is sometimes scary even to me.

As I sit here today, in my modern home, typing on a gadget smaller than a paperback but more powerful than the greatest supercomputers of the 1950s, I think back fondly to warm summer nights, Neapolitan ice cream, and a fringe-laden dress that became my time machine for a summer.