Midweek Modness: John Frederics Hats

In the 1950s, John Frederics was one of the most celebrated milliners in the US. He was most famous for Vivien Leigh’s hats in the movie Gone With The Wind. He was a society hat maker crowning the likes of Duchess of Windsor and Gloria Vanderbilt, but also created chapeaux for ordinary women, like the floppy hats pictured in the pattern above. While women wouldn’t be caught dead without headgear in the 1940s and ’50s, the decline in the hat’s popularity put Mr. John, as he was also known, out of business. He died in 1993.