Fashion it seems has pretty much no bounds whatever era you may live in and bumper sized, feather covered hats had seamlessly spread around the world during Edward VII’s reign. For students of Edwardian fashion today, it is worth researching T. Eaton Co Limited of Toronto in Canada.
Established in 1869, it was, by 1896, billing itself as ‘Canada’s Greatest Store’ and was obviously a very switched on operator in the retail world. Eaton’s produced many product catalogues – the first being in 1884, and some expanding to several hundred pages over the years. As part of their range, they offered a large choice of assorted fashion products, which were often referred to as ‘The Edwardian Look’. Maybe the Canadian tastes were a little more conservative than those of their European cousins however; hats from London and Paris were often expensive to import and the French designs often being considered a touch outré. Eaton’s got over this to some degree by having its own millinery department claiming to employ several hundred young women, most of whom would have been earning no more than $20 per month. This claim is partially supported by photographs from 1902 and 1904 from the Archives of Ontario; their workroom appear packed with young ladies beavering away producing vast quantities of hats ‘to suit the taste and style of Canadians’. Further interesting reference to the company’s millinery operation may be found in the form of a number of stereoscopic images held at the National Gallery of Canada and dating from around 1906 onwards.
The company also offered to the millinery trade (and those customers who wanted to ‘do their own thing’) a range of untrimmed hats together with trimming supplies such as feathers. A search through the company’s archive catalogues will yield many interesting visual examples of ladies outfits – and hats in particular, smothered with copious quantities of feathers on page after page.