What’s in the Box?

The year was 1973 when my father had the bad taste to buy my mother a makeover session at Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door, located at 919 N. Michigan Ave on the Magnificent Mile. Not only was Elinor secretly insulted, but she was set to be disappointed, and boy howdy was she ever. Formerly a light brunette, she came home  a raven-haired Carmen with red lips and a beehive. 

Elizabeth Arden, born Florence Nightingale Graham, opened her first salon in 1910. She was a pioneer in creating an exclusive place where a woman could reinvent herself, and many Chicago ladies made a monthly trip. Over the following decades, the Red Door salon expanded to multiple locations across the United States and internationally, offering facials, massages, body treatments, and salon services that set industry standards. My mother, though – a practical woman who didn’t wear jewelry or makeup – didn’t buy any of it. Most women didn’t tire of finding new ways to transform, something Miss Arden relied on; but after visiting the Red Door for a makeover in 1973 Elinor was boiling mad. Elinor’s next move was to find herself a hat at nearby Marshall Fields, and she picked a Dorée of NY cloche that covered her whole head. I don’t have the hat, but I have the Dorée hatbox!

And so does our reader LM have a Dorée box, and she has, in fact, a desirable collection of vintage hat boxes. Her Dorée box ($48 at Etsy) is one of her favorites, because in an era where lady’s accessories were advertised in mellow pastels, the Dorée box is arrestingly red, black and white. Other names to watch for are boxes from Leslie James, Don Anderson, and Claude St-Cyr. LM’s elegant hat boxes were found at garage sales, thrift and estate sales, their whimsical themes harkening back to a more innocent era. Classic Paris scenes feature fashionable shoppers of bohemian Paris, and mustachioed gendarmes. 

Hat boxes are today found for sale at prices I didn’t believe (as I have formerly thrown many away): Gage Original, $56; MCM Bagmaster with zipper, $60; Knox NY men’s round box, $48; Octagonal Coralie box, $42; 1920s men’s Dobbs box, $100; Resistol men’s 1940s, $50; an 18th century wood box with brass hinges, $200; a scoop top leather top hat travelling box, $200; a 1930s flat bottom round train case hat box, $60; a wig box train case, $75; and an eight-sided men’s Dobbs Fifth Ave New York box, $48. You’ll never find vintage hat boxes in perfect shape, because if they exist today, they have been through 75 plus years of protecting a hat. 

Dorée, the hat company that created my mother’s cloche turban hat (worn in 1973 under duress), was a middle market commercial manufacturer (1940-1970 peak) creating good, crafted Fedoras, turbans, cloches, mushrooms, buckets, berets, sparkly cocktail, or net hats, and feather and fur hats. Felt could be wool felt or fur felt. Dorée was a company, not a designer, unlike the New York Big Three: Mr. John (folllowing his business split with Frederic Hirst and their John-Frederics label of nearly two-decades) was the Christian Dior of hats from 1948-70, designing for Gone with the Wind, Dietrich, Monroe, Bacall, and Gloria Vanderbilt, to name but a few. French born Lilly Daché was the queen of NY draped turbans and provocative half-hats. Halston started his career under Daché as Roy Halston Frowick before he became just Halston, years before he burst into fame with his Jackie Kennedy pillbox worn to JFK’s inauguration 1961. 

The other queen of hats was Sally Victor who hatted first ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Mamie Eisenhower. Hat and hat box collectors just missed Hats Off: Halston Hats from the Masterson Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, featuring Halston’s designs from his stint at Bergdorf Goodman (LM has a 1959 box). When asked “why hats?” Halston said “sculpting hats taught me how to think about fashion in three dimensions.” 

LM has a Schiaparelli box, Italian boxes, London boxes, as well as I. Magnin, Lord & Taylor, and Saks recognizable signature styles. She also has a subsection of boxes that picture American cities: New York, Dallas, St. Louis, Miami, and Memphis. But perhaps the overarching motif of LM’s hat box show are those that reference charming Paris, such as the square City of Paris box from the San Francisco City of Paris Department Store, closed in 1972. She has displayed her Paris boxes with that icon of French haute-kitsch taste, the French poodle – who also stars on figurines, compacts, purses, ashtrays, jewelry, and scarves. Not to mention that LM’s husband proposed with a vintage Eiffel Tower themed ring box!