Riviera Hat - Courtesy of Ellen Christine Millinery

At the risk of offending anyone at all, we hereby declare the next two weeks hat shopping season.

Buy a hat for Passover, buy a hat for Easter, or just for feeling good, but feel free to use these two weeks as an excuse to go hat shopping. Occasionally, Passover and Easter join forces as they do this year. That’s a good thing, since we need all the spiritual back up we can muster at this juncture . The time is propitious, so, little ole hat maker that I am, I’m paying attention to the auguries, the oracles, and birds flying over the Lincoln Memorial and making as much inventory as my little fingers will allow.

The custom of wearing a hat to Temple is known in the Orthodox Jewish world and revered as part of the respect afforded the community, the Rabbi, and God. Easter hats, on the other hand, are a distant memory, harking back to days of yore when we all wore matching tweed suits to church, with our hats, gloves and shoes in perfect harmony. The Jewish community still maintains a special place for the hat in their circles, while Catholics worry about mussing up their hairdos and feel no need to indulge–since the Ecumenical Council in 1963, that is. Before that, the hat ruled in every church in the world.

Black women still afford a lofty place for the hat in their lives, especially for church. Just look at the hubbub that surrounded Aretha’s hat for Inauguration Day, and you’ll know the style most favored by that demographic. Catholics wear nothing, or sometimes choose to don a modest hat as a guest at a wedding, or horticultural activity. Mostly the Wasps of the world accept “hat” as a must for social functions and appropriate diplomatic moments. And then we have that most celebrated of hat-wearing activities: the races. Place your bets and wear your hats, as Ascot is upon us, Kentucky Derby looms nigh, and Breeders need hats from Dubai to Suffolk Downs.

The annual Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City is famous thanks to the Fred Astaire/Judy Garland vehicle used in the 1948 Hollywood film, which demonstrated the opulence of Easter in the past. Church first, then the promenade was the order of the day.

Now, the hats most worn and photographed by Mr. Cunningham in the NYTimes on that particular Sunday are architectural concotions built mostly for the sake of the child in us all, and not to celebrate the art of the milliner.

Nevertheless, the heart of the matter is the hat on a head, no matter what…it’s in the air.