Easter Bonnets Brimming With Spring Blossoms
What distinguishes this year’s pint-size Easter bonnets from last year’s? Strong colors and enough flowers to sink a small chapeau.
At the Chocolate Giraffe in Glendale, where the posie-laden kiddie millinery looks very adult, owner Kathy Soulek says that’s the way her customers like it.
“Mothers want a true fashion hat. They don’t want a dumb straw with one dumb flower. And this year, everyone wants a hat to match the colors in the dress.”
To match pretty floral prints with white collars, Soulek offers $15 to $40 straws in red, yellow, purple or kelly. The toppings include generous servings of silk flowers and dollops of costume jewelry.
Daisies rank as the No. 1 hat flower for tiny fashion plates at Fred Segal on Melrose Avenue. To suit parents, the daisies and any other posies have to be on “really trendy” hats, says Krissy Carlin, buyer for the infants and toddlers department. Included in the store’s $22 to $48 spring collection is a black straw trimmed with a big polka-dot flower. But Carlin says most parents have lightened up this year. They want less black and white (last year’s yuppie favorite) and more “muted brights,” like coral.
At Nordstrom, a muted fuchsia straw caught the eye of Antoinette Nolan, who buys Easter millinery every year for her three daughters, ages 3, 6 and 9. Although she normally spends between $10 and $15, Nolan liked the $22 straw Breton so much, she says she is considering going over budget for it. And by next year, the hat will have earned its keep. Clothing is passed down from one girl to the next, but Easter hats are not. They get too much wear and tear, Nolan says, from going to church every Sunday and being used to play dress-up.
With Easter bonnets a tradition for little girls, many mothers want only the traditional. At JC Penney in Torrance, merchandise manager Nancy Gutzmer predicts that her supply of 480 polyester straw hats (at $6 and $7 each, depending on size) will be gone by Easter. Some are cream color, but the majority are white, decorated with ribbons and a few blossoms. It is the same basic style the chain has stocked “for more than a decade.” Any updating is kept to a minimum, which this year means colored brims around white crowns and ribbons decorated with the season’s winning flowers--daisies.
