The Red Hat Society
Sue Ellen Cooper
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Warner Books
ISBN: 0446679763

Fun and Friendship After Fifty.

Not only does the Founder & Queen Mother of The Red Hat Society tell us the herstory of how this movement came into being, she apprises us of the many serendipitous adventures along the way.

Like mushrooms after the rain, women have come together, first in twos & threes, to have fun scrounging around in second-hand clothes stores, at fleamarkets & yard sales, even arts & crafts departments to find the hats that express themselves, & then they get together, draped in purple & topped with scarlet, to quaff tea or nibble dinner: what we really get together for is to join in the fun.

Like a global network, women wearing red hats know each other, no matter where they are, & they gather, sans Robert's Rules of Order, to simply have a few laughs, make a few friends, eye everyone's noggin-toppers, & yes, sometimes to add their energy to “worthy causes”.

& how did the idea of a red hat society come about? Remember that poem Warning which swept across the world a few decades ago, & starts with the line:

     “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple...”?

Well, the British poet Jenny Joseph is the Muse who penned those immortal words back in 1960. I did some digging & came up with an editorial on Wearing The Purple.

Breathless & amusing, feisty & funny Queen Mother Sue Ellen Cooper has caught the essence of what moves The Red Hat Society women. Red Hatters make tons of puns, silliness & light-hearted pranks. Much needed in this time of terrorism & war. The hats & the dressing-up are all part of remembering to giggle, share & support.

The Red Hat Society women come in all shapes & sizes, from all walks of life & in every nook & cranny of the world, & they play with their names using every hue imaginable: scarlet, carmine, vermilion, crimson, cerise, cherry-red, beet-red, ruby, garnet, maroon, brick-red, infrared, far infrared, near infrared, claret, rust, red-gold, magenta, pink, damask, coral-red, blood-red, solferino, fuchsia, russet, terra cotta, bittersweet, geranium lake, nacarat, nacarine, Harvard crimson, hyacinth red, Chinese red, Morocco red, caldron, Turkey red, Alizarin red, aniline red, aurora red, Bengal red, Congo red, Venetian red, Indian red, Indian ocher, chrome-red, carthamus red, rose, rose de Pompadour, rose blush, rose du Barry, old rose, Tyrian purple, fire engine red, candy apple red, rouge, sorrel.

Plainly & simply written The Red Hat Society tells how to start your own chapter, create meetings, meals & memories, & has a list of all the known chapters at print time.

& yes, I do have a red hat & even our little burg has a chapter which meets at the one & only restaurant which can cater to our company, & it's fun seeing all the creations.
(07/18/04)

Rebecca