Just about the same time the Merry Widow hat came on the scene, another very different sort of hat began to appear: the turban. Paul Poiret was responsible for this, attempting to evoke fashions of a hundred years prior from the Regency and Directoire era in his designs. The new orientalism in fashion also contributed to their use.
The turban seems to have been more popular in Europe than in America (where we do always like things big -- the Merry Widow thus stayed more true to taste) but it did seem to catch on somewhat for the purpose of evening wear. The fact that it offered no sun protection to preserve one's pale skin probably contributed to its being passed by for most day wear.
Maybe to keep up with the largeness of the other fashionable hats, even the turban began expanding from chic little oriental pieces to boxy, gargantuan devices that once again came to resemble nothing so much as bird's nests, merging ultimately with the toque until the smaller post-war hairstyles made dainty turbans once again reasonable for the masses.
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