This enormous Edwardian doll hat is very large. It is decorated with a great number of feathers, and it has a big bow right at the front.
It was made from a kit by a sadly no-longer-in-operation doll hat pattern company called Cathy Stuart Designs.
I bought and made up two kits from them – this silk Gainsborough hat and a 1920s cloche hat. I was thrilled with both of them – the fit was perfect for an American Girl Doll. Unfortunately, between making these two hats and ordering more, the company vanished – phone number disconnected and my mail-order returned to sender, so there are no more styles to make up!
As an American Girl doll hat, this one serves multiple time-periods quite well. Depending on the styling, it could be an enormous Edwardian doll hat, or it could be an enormous eighteenth century Gainsborough doll hat – or it could even be something reasonably modern and champagne-smeared (but still enormous) to be worn by a doll at a luncheon for the Melbourne Cup.
(Ignore the Silver Robe Francaise that the American Girl doll is wearing – she is clearly in a state of temporal and existential confusion. We don’t worry about it. She’s a doll. She spends most of her life with sewing pins stuck into her torso, and THAT that would unhinge anybody.)
