Tale of a Hat

The whole letter column of the Saturday Review of Literature was taken up by one letter. The letter-writer was one Gustave Lamartine, onetime head of the French Academy of Design. He had quite a tale to tell: 1) he had made a 50,000-franc wager with one Max Gerhardt, Austrian hat designer, that he could design a preposterous hat and get women to wear it; 2) he had won the bet. Wrote he:

"[The hat] was not even a head-covering, since it was almost flat and had to be pinned to the top of the head to remain fixed. Onto this grotesque creation I affixed some unrelated feathers and flowers. ... As I anticipated, the leading milliners of Paris, London and New York enthusiastically hailed the new creation. . . . There were decorations protruding from decorations, colors clashed wherever possible; long feathers would bristle out at least a foot over the head. . . .

"I am writing to the Saturday Review about this [because] I believe the hat style that I created and that is now still in vogue uses much material that would be better used [in] the war effort.

"I am referring here to the countless wires for flower decorations, the millions of long pins necessary to keep the hats in place, the huge tonnage of glue for fixings, the untold quantity of rubber and elastic bands sometimes used instead of pins, the miles of lace going into veils, etc., etc. . . .

"You may be sure that had I realized, back in 1934 and 1935, that my creation would persist ... I would never have made my ill-fated wager. Moreover, were it not for the war I should probably have carried my secret to the grave. . . ."

M. Lamartine had kicked up a rumpus: the Review mailbag began to swell. A doctor wrote in to complain that the use of hatpins "is an actual and potential hazard to the health of our female population" because scalp abrasions invite invasion by the "bacillus Welchii." A poesy-minded lady in Los Angeles wrote:

"There may be no meat on the platter, No coffee, nor butter for bread; It all seems a trivial matter So long as I have on my head A fluff and a puff and a whimsy Suggestive of Salvador Dali, Irrelevant, flaunting and flimsy, A symbol of feminine folly. . . ." Two publishers wanted to get in touch with Lamartine to persuade him to write a book. Newsreel photographers hammered at Editor Norman Cousins' door, demanding to know M. Lamartine's where abouts. Manhattan newsmen tried vainly to find him. A female reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal tried to get material for a series on hat fads. But M. Lamartine could not be found.

Reason: "M. Lamartine" was Editor Cousins, who hates preposterous hats. He had deliberately put obvious flaws in his letter (e.g., there is no French Academy of Design), was astounded that anyone had been hoaxed by M. Lamartine.

This week, unable longer to cope with mail, phone calls and visitors seeking the great designer, Editor Cousins made a clean breast of it. Said he: "If the incident results in a single hat that looks like a hat, Old Gus will not have died or lied in vain."

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