Red Hats & Purple Dresses –
Feeling Good About Being "an Older Woman"
by Wendy Priesnitz
Wear a red hat with a purple dress? Wear white shoes after Labor Day? Laugh loudly in public? Not allowed, according the rules many women “of a certain age” have lived by in the past. But no longer do those rules – or any others, for that matter – shackle the behavior of a growing number of loosely affiliated 50-something (and older, much older) women across North America.
The members of the Red Hat Society have found growing older and breaking those silly rules to be so much fun, in fact, that they have spontaneously organized themselves into something of a revolution about the way society views older women.
Actually, the Red Hat Society is often referred to fondly as a “disorganization”. However, with over 3,000 chapters across North America, it has been forced to impart a degree of order to its operations, according to founder Sue Ellen Cooper of Fullerton, California.
A bit of organization maybe, but no rules. Just a dress code: red hats and purple dresses. After a lifetime of following the rules and pleasing others, these women figure they’ve earned the right to dress gaudily if they want to. So as a way of laughing at mid-life and beyond, these women wear the obligatory old-age purple and lace, but spoof it up by adding an outrageous hat that doesn’t match.
The group started rather inadvertently. While visiting a friend several years ago, Cooper impulsively bought a bright red fedora at a thrift shop. A year or two later she read a popular poem entitled “Warning” by Jenny Joseph, which begins “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat which doesn’t go...”. She decided that her birthday gift to a friend would be a vintage red hat and a copy of the poem. Then she gave the same gift to another friend, then another, then another....
One day, it occurred to the women that they were becoming a sort of Red Hat Society and perhaps should go out to tea wearing their hats and purple dresses. They gave themselves titles like “Exalted Queen Mother”, “Princess Daughter” and “Sergeant in Gloves”.
According to the official story line, they had so much fun that they bought more hats and invited more women. Since tea tables are rather small and the women had friends in other places besides California, they have had to encourage other women to start their own chapters.
When the women were featured in Romantic Homes Magazine in July of 2000, they began to get inquiries from other interested women across North America who wanted to start their own chapters. They then decided to utilize the web as a means of communication.
Now, flamboyant scarlet hats, purple frocks, red boas, lace gloves and other bits of humorous clothing are worn by fun-loving women all across the continent and, increasingly, around the world. They meet for tea and other events, and the only rule is that they should be appropriately dressed and focused on having some “sisterly fun”.
Actually, these aren’t really “rules” but “suggestions”. Oh, and you should be over 50. (You can join if you’re younger, but it is suggested that you wear a pink hat and lavender outfit until you have the birthday.) As the Raspberry Tarts chapter in Kitchener, Ontario claims, “You can tell you’re over 50 when... you stop taking yourself seriously!”.
In April of 2002 in Chicago, the Red Hat Society held its first convention. Imagine an entire hotel filled with women “of a certain age” wearing red hats and purple outfits (they even had a pajama party)! Planning is already underway for next year’s shindig, to be held in Nashville in May, 2003. There’s even a storefront in Fullerton, California that sells Red Hat paraphernalia like fluffy boas, crowns and tiaras, rhinestone sunglasses, hat pins, broaches and mugs with the trademarked Red Hat Society logo...and lots of red hats.
So if you’re in a tea room somewhere and there’s a group of high spirited women wearing red hats and purple dresses, you’ll know they’re merely taking advantage of one of the most effective and inexpensive antidotes for aging – acceptance laced with humor.
Learn More
Red Hat Society
Warning: When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple by Jenny Joseph, Pythia Ashton-Jewell (Souvenir Press, 2001)
When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purpleby Sandra Haldeman Martz (Editor), Foreword by Jenny Joseph (Papier-Mache Press, 1991)
The Red Hat Society (R)'s Laugh Lines: Stories of Inspiration and Hattitude by Sue Ellen Cooper (Grand Central Publishing, 2005)
Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with over 40 years of experience. She has also authored 13 books.
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