The Edwardian era was a time of big hair, and big hair required proportionally big hats. They reached their utmost when the Merry Widow Hat sprang to the scene in 1907, after being featured in a play by the same name. The brim alone could reach a depth of as much as a foot, and the crown was made extra roomy as well. Satirical drawings and doctored photos exaggerated the size all the more (as shown at right.) Coco Chanel, who began her career as a milliner during this period, described them as "bird's nests" for all the feathers and lacy swaths wrapped about them. The actual shape of the hat was often lost for all the piles of trim placed upon it.
The original item which started the craze was an immense black crinoline hat, banded round the crown with silver and two huge pink roses nestling under the brim. In 1908, as a promotion for a performance of The Merry Widow at the New Amsterdam Theater, free replica hats were promised to theater-going women. This prompted what was dubbed The Battle of the Hats, as chaos ensued when impatient women stormed the cloakroom and overwhelmed the female staff to get at the promised articles.
The fad of the Merry Widow lasted till around 1913, when smaller and more practical hats replaced them as the mode.
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