By Samantha Critchell, Associated Press April 5, 2007 found at rockymountainnews.com
It certainly was a good time to get into the hat business, says Pamela
Roskin, one of the graduate-student curators of ''Lilly Dache: Glamour at the
Drop of a Hat.'' Women often bought a new hat each season, and many bought
three or four of them.
''A woman's best hat would be a Lilly Dache,'' Roskin said.
The first test of Dache's ingenuity came during the wartime '40s, when
there were limits on materials and many women were going to work instead of
lunch. It's also when the Dache Net, a hair net, debuted in drug stores.
A Dache snood, a covering for women's hair buns, appeared on the cover of a
1942 issue of Vogue, and by 1944 she was making work-friendly turbans and
kerchief-style hats. ''They were fashion versions of the Rosie the Riveter
look,'' Roskin said.
For the more formal hats that she continued to make, Dache turned to
trimmings — such as lace and ribbon, which were not rationed — as the
primary material for hats.
The postwar boom brought an opportunity for the hatmaker to tackle other
parts of the wardrobe and she launched both a clothing collection and a
fragrance. She and her husband, a top executive at Coty, were a marketing
dream team, putting stylish women wearing Dache hats and outfits in the
cosmetic company's ads.
The 1950s were a transitional period for hats. In the early years, hats
became ultra dramatic and ultra elegant — a true status symbol, but by the
end of the decade interest in hats began to wane.
Dache started to create hats that mimicked hairstyles: A cropped hat made
of yellow-and-black feathers with a headband-style bow featured in the exhibit
is a perfect example.
Young designer Roy Halston, who went on to be Jackie Kennedy's hatmaker of
choice, had his first job with Lilly Dache in the late '50s. A pillbox hat was
in the collection by 1959.
Hairstyles of the '60s greatly influenced the direction of hats. They were
either very small or very large to accommodate the trend of women wearing
their hair longer and looser.
Since she was the standard-bearer of her industry, her peers were
understandably upset when Dache turned out to a big social event in the '60s
without a hat on her head, according to Roskin. Dache explained that it simply
was not all that fashionable to wear hats anymore and that she would start
wearing wigs — which, of course, she also sold.
Dache retired in 1968 but kept her hand in the fashion business, licensing
her name to menswear companies. She died in 1990, and in 2002 became the only
milliner featured in the Fashion Walk of Style in the Garment District.