Editing Victorian fashion (section)

==Hats==
[[File:Ford.madox.brown.last.emma.study.jpg|thumb|''Emma Hill'' by [[Ford Madox Brown]] (1853), a woman wearing a later version of the [[poke bonnet]]]]
[[File:Adelina Patti 1863.jpg|thumb|upright|Opera singer [[Adelina Patti]] painted by [[Franz Xaver Winterhalter]] in 1863]]

Hats were crucial to a respectable appearance for both men and women. To go bareheaded was simply not proper. The top hat, for example, was standard formal wear for upper- and middle-class men.<ref name=":4" /> For women, the styles of hats changed over time and were designed to match their outfits.

During the early Victorian decades, voluminous skirts held up with [[crinoline]]s, and then [[hoop skirts]], were the focal point of the silhouette. To enhance the style without distracting from it, hats were modest in size and design, straw and fabric bonnets being the popular choice. [[Poke bonnet]]s, which had been worn during the late [[Regency period]], had high, small crowns and brims that grew larger until the 1830s, when the face of a woman wearing a poke bonnet could only be seen directly from the front. They had rounded brims, echoing the rounded form of the bell-shaped hoop skirts.

The silhouette changed once again as the Victorian era drew to a close. The shape was essentially an inverted triangle, with a wide-brimmed hat on top, a full upper body with puffed sleeves, no bustle, and a skirt that narrowed at the ankles<ref>{{cite book|last=Laver|first=James|title=Costume and Fashion: A Concise History|year=2002|publisher=Thames & Hudson Ltd.|location=London|isbn=978-0-500-20348-4|pages=224–5}}</ref> (the [[hobble skirt]] was a fad shortly after the end of the Victorian era). The enormous wide-brimmed hats were covered with elaborate creations of silk flowers, ribbons, and above all, exotic plumes; hats sometimes included entire exotic birds that had been stuffed. Many of these plumes came from birds in the Florida everglades, which were nearly made entirely extinct by overhunting. By 1899, early environmentalists like [[Adeline Knapp]] were engaged in efforts to curtail the hunting for plumes. By 1900, more than five million birds a year were being slaughtered, and nearly 95 per cent of Florida's shore birds had been killed by [[Plume hunting|plume hunter]]s.<ref>{{cite web|title=Everglades National Park|url=https://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/parks/everglades/|publisher=PBS|access-date=7 November 2011}}</ref>