Fedoras, Toques, Berets Get Top Billing

Fashion is making headway.

Women are now tipping their hats, if you will, to fezzes, berets, toques and turbans.

They have discovered that a hat can turn a simple tailored suit into an ensemble or transform a plain but chic cocktail dress into an entrance maker .

Department stores in Los Angeles are reporting brisk sales of hats, both frilly and tailored, in all shapes and sizes.

Hats are “fashion-right for the season’s new interest in updated classics,” says Joan Nelson, vice president of creative merchandising for the May Co., where the best sellers are berets and fedoras in bright colors, as well as black.

At Nordstrom, hats of the season are the toque (a brimless shape that fits close to the head and “goes with the Chanel feeling and a more dressed-up look”) and a small-brimmed boater-style with a taffeta ribbon and bustle-back bow. Patti Lewis, fashion director for Southern California, says the hats are at selected Nordstrom stores.

By night, hats take on new life, equipped with frills of every description--sequins, tulle, lame, fringe, netting, satin.

“There’s no resistance to how fanciful they become,” says Denise Cohen, fashion coordinator of accessories and shoes at Bullock’s, where hats with netting have taken off for both day and night.

“What’s selling? Romance,” Ann Sappington, accessories department manager at Neiman-Marcus, says.

In a season of big-selling evening hats, a gold lame turban designed by Frank Olive has proven to be the store’s most popular item.

Olive explains the phenomenon this way: “Women’s closets are already packed with utilitarian merchandise, so anything that has a little mystery and glamour to it is now desirable.”

Besides, he adds, “For so many years we went through hatlessness.”

Too many years.