Cataloging Catalogs: HATS!!! Montgomery Ward Spring/Summer 1943

What I have discovered from collecting catalogs so far is that I really, really, do love 1940's fashion, and in particular this first catalog of mine from 1943 has turned out to be a real favorite. 1943 was a good year for clothes and accessories even while the world was in the thick of WWII!

Now for course it is good to remember these pages are from Wards, where regular people shopped, so these images may not represent the avant garde or ultra "fashionable" looks of the time necessarily. I'm not sure how the relationship between department stores and high fashion functioned in the 1940's, but now in 2017 for example I would consider the stock at Macy's to be much more conservative/mundane on average than the looks on Paris runways or in Vogue. In many ways that's what makes old catalogs like this such an amazing resource to have in addition to the more glamorous surviving materials like Hollywood films of the time, because these catalog show us what was available to a more average consumer. This also highlights how truly flamboyant some fashions of the 40's were if these majestic hats here in Wards were not fantastical catwalk creations, but stuff your mom would wear. How fabulous these hats are, it is just too much not to be able to buy them today! Why did hats go out of fashion!!!

More than ever I encourage you to view these images as big as possible and soak in the details. The text describes the many colors each hat may have been available in, and I challenge you to not think to yourself "yes, yes, one of each please!" Let these images be inspiration to any of you milliners out there, we need more hats like these again.

Feel free as always to pin, save, and share! I hope some of you out there enjoy these resources as much as I do <3 There's still a few more posts worth of images from the 1943 catalog, and then we will be jumping into a new catalog (or two, or three catalogs!) next year!