HSU IT Department

The Toronto Star had a truly scathing piece on the hat crimes committed at the royal wedding. Being a nice person who doesn't violate copyright I won't post the entire column (and besides it's really long), but here's an excerpt:

Friday was a dark day in hat history. Crimes were committed that would harrow thy soul and freeze thy young blood. I offer Exhibit 1, Princess Beatrice’s blot on millinery, and throw my client on the mercy of the court. Not myself, of course, your Honour, as I have a number of other clients who have yet to enter a plea.

Beatrice is wearing what appears to be a mushroom-coloured silk doorknocker surrounded by an octopus in strangely Fallopian death throes. It might just as easily be an ancient birth control device known as a Dutch cap — they were still making them that beige colour in the mid-1970s — or a still-rolled condom combined with a snake metaphor, stuck for reasons best known to Beatrice on the top half of her face rather than her actual head.

Read the rest of it here. And laugh.

Of course the wedding itself was beautiful, elegant and all that is classy (and yes, I got up for it but not at 3am!). But oh, the hats. The strange exotic weirdly-positioned did-they-look-in-the-mirror Alice-in-Wonderland hats.

I love that we brought with us from Ye Olde Countrye the English Common Law, cask-aged ale, tea (earl grey hot) and the tune for "God Bless America," but thank all the gods of whatever flavor and denomination there may be that we did not import the British worship of hats on important occasions.*

I mean, Aretha's at the inaugural was humorous enough but can you imagine the respect the U.S. would have (not) commanded if Dubya had had to flaunt the c'boy hat at every formal event? Yikes!

*Disclaimer: I have NO DOUBT that all MY British friends and acquaintances would have had far far better taste.