Cocktail hat

The cocktail hat is a style of millinery worn at parties and festive gatherings, especially in the evening.

Meredyth Etherington-Smith wrote in London's Independent that cocktail hats are her favorite style of hat. She describes them as being "absurdly frivolous" and something "you cram on at the end of a hard day in the office and sally forth to a cocktail party looking as if you have spent the afternoon getting ready rather than staring at a computer screen." Smith calls a surrealist black velvet hat in the shape of a high-heeled shoe with a 3-foot feather (a museum piece designed by Elsa Schiaparelli for Madame Salvador Dali in the 1930s) the best one she's owned. "It caused major upheavals whenever I wore it" but came to "a bad end when a drunk in a cocktail bar in New York sneaked up behind me and cut off the feather" causing despair for weeks she wrote. A white cocktail hat made by North Vancouver's Doreen Marlor and constructed with paper from a local craft store was part of the Fibre, Naturally: Paper Like You Have Never Seen it Before on Granville Island at Emily Carr University. Nancy Matt, a milliner from Saratoga Springs, recommends brimless cocktail hats for people dressing up in the evening.