The Hat in the Time Capsule

Wikipedia Commons As a sign of how important hats were to women in the 1930s, the creators of the time capsule at the 1939 New York World’s Fair included a hat by celebrity milliner Lilly Dachẻ. The above picture shows her placing the hat, packed in cotton, in the cylinder. It was one of thousands of items, including a Mickey Mouse cup, a copy of Gone with the Wind, and Spalding’s Rules of Baseball, all meant to give humans of the future an idea of American life in the late 1930s. See a list here. Vogue magazine via Getty Images What did the hat look like? As far as I can tell, there is no extant picture online. I think the Wikipedia image shows a shovel-like tool rather than a hat. One millinery site says it was turban made of deep green and purple silk jersey. Another Dachẻ fan posted a striking photo, but gave no indication that it was the actual hat. Perhaps the 1936 picture above of a Dache turban gives some idea. Unless you are a better sleuth than I am, we will have to wait…