Cloche, rust velvet with embossed flowers, 1920s, right side view

1920s. Rust velvet cloche on buckram and wire, with a deep domed crown and narrow brim.
The brim is oval, widest at the sides. The front and back are turned up. The edge of the brim and its seam to the crown are reinforced with wire. The crown is made with a buckram base shorter than the velvet covering it, so that the velvet makes two soft horizontal folds before it is sewn to the brim.
Flowers and leaves are embossed onto orange, green, and pink velvet and sewn to the front of the crown. A tarnished metallic ribbon weaves through the flowers and wraps around the crown. like a hatband. A knotted thread at the left side indicates another decorative element, now missing.
The brim is lined with the same rust velvet. The crown is lined with black glazed cotton, basted to the velvet at the seam of the brim and crown, with an added interior band on top. The cotton is gathered along a thread at the top of the crown. A milliner’s label is stamped in gold at the back on the lining. Professionally made. Sewn by machine with hand-sewn finishing.

The Irma G. Bowen Historic Clothing Collection digital catalog was produced by the UNH Library Digital Collection Initiative, supported in part by a grant from the Mooseplate program and New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. Additional funding provided by the E. Ruth Buxton Stephenson Memorial Fund.

Photography copyright, Astrida Schaeffer.