Millinery videos on British Pathe...
I love surfing old newsreels on British Pathe, and there are an incredible number of excellent documentary clips on hatmaking and related techniques. The narration is often a bit cheesy and dated in tone (and occasionally sexist/racist by modern standards), but the opportunity to see these artisans at work is invaluable!
Here are a few of my favorites:
Hatters forming silk-plush top hats in 1951! You can read about this process in Debbie Henderson's excellent resource book The Top Hat, but it is cool to see the processes happen which are described in that text, too.
Felt hat blocking in 1938 at a Luton hat factory. Some great shots of the industrial finishing machines in use.
Luton hatmakers stitching straw boaters by machine in 1952. I love the point in this video where a factory worker basically does the industrial-process version of the technique i describe in this post on restoring vintage straw! Cool!
Silent newsreel from 1933 of Italian straw-plaiters, including a great section of a woman making a spiral-plaited Breton hat and installing its lining.
Have you ever wondered about the structure inside the tall fur hats of the Buckingham Palace Guards? There is a great clip from 1936 showing exactly how they're made to satisfy your curiosity!
Feathered hatmaking techniques from 1955. Great to see the milliners' process in constructing these hats, particularly since if you have some in your costume stock, they often need restoration of dropped feathers.
A video from 1958 featuring hair designers ventilating wigs and creating some hairstyle/hat hybrid looks, super-fun!
In keeping with the recent spate of posts about the Stephen Jones Millinery Contest (for which the winner will be announced Tuesday, August 30th!), there's a great clip about a 1945 hat design contest, which includes a cute section showing initial mockups contrasted with the finished hats created according to the winning designs.
Here's a great one showing a cordwainer making a leather Billingsgate porter's helmet, what's probably a lost art at this point, but well-documented and technically interesting to watch!
A truly bizarre 1932 video of hatters making varnished wooden cloches. Seriously, what? They're cool-looking!
Another unusual millinery material trend from the era of silent film: crepe paper! This clip from 1926 illustrates a couple of methods for making garnitures and trims from crepe paper, not exactly a durable medium for stage millinery, but fascinating from a historical perspective. Reminds me of all the paper and husk flowers I bought in the street markets in Mexico last summer! And this 1930 video shows the process of making a wide-brimmed sun hat with a gathered underbrim, which could be super-cute reworked as a buckram and fabric hat!
And, definitely just for fun, this clip shows the manufacturing process for papier mache party hat styles from 1957. It's neat to see these hats going together in fairly traditional processes modified for the medium (like the section where a lady attaches a foiled-paper visor to a mache "dragoon's hat" the same way you would stitch one onto the "real" version).
Here are a few of my favorites:
Hatters forming silk-plush top hats in 1951! You can read about this process in Debbie Henderson's excellent resource book The Top Hat, but it is cool to see the processes happen which are described in that text, too.
Felt hat blocking in 1938 at a Luton hat factory. Some great shots of the industrial finishing machines in use.
Luton hatmakers stitching straw boaters by machine in 1952. I love the point in this video where a factory worker basically does the industrial-process version of the technique i describe in this post on restoring vintage straw! Cool!
Silent newsreel from 1933 of Italian straw-plaiters, including a great section of a woman making a spiral-plaited Breton hat and installing its lining.
Have you ever wondered about the structure inside the tall fur hats of the Buckingham Palace Guards? There is a great clip from 1936 showing exactly how they're made to satisfy your curiosity!
Feathered hatmaking techniques from 1955. Great to see the milliners' process in constructing these hats, particularly since if you have some in your costume stock, they often need restoration of dropped feathers.
A video from 1958 featuring hair designers ventilating wigs and creating some hairstyle/hat hybrid looks, super-fun!
In keeping with the recent spate of posts about the Stephen Jones Millinery Contest (for which the winner will be announced Tuesday, August 30th!), there's a great clip about a 1945 hat design contest, which includes a cute section showing initial mockups contrasted with the finished hats created according to the winning designs.
Here's a great one showing a cordwainer making a leather Billingsgate porter's helmet, what's probably a lost art at this point, but well-documented and technically interesting to watch!
A truly bizarre 1932 video of hatters making varnished wooden cloches. Seriously, what? They're cool-looking!
Another unusual millinery material trend from the era of silent film: crepe paper! This clip from 1926 illustrates a couple of methods for making garnitures and trims from crepe paper, not exactly a durable medium for stage millinery, but fascinating from a historical perspective. Reminds me of all the paper and husk flowers I bought in the street markets in Mexico last summer! And this 1930 video shows the process of making a wide-brimmed sun hat with a gathered underbrim, which could be super-cute reworked as a buckram and fabric hat!
And, definitely just for fun, this clip shows the manufacturing process for papier mache party hat styles from 1957. It's neat to see these hats going together in fairly traditional processes modified for the medium (like the section where a lady attaches a foiled-paper visor to a mache "dragoon's hat" the same way you would stitch one onto the "real" version).