As reported by the Chicago Daily News, sister paper of the Chicago Sun-Times:
High society Chicagoans of 1939 refused to stay in on a gray, chilly Easter Sunday — especially since the Easter parade was the best place to show off your finest hat.
A society report from the April 10, 1939 edition of the Chicago Daily News offered a snapshot of Chicago’s Easter parade that year. The parades were initially an unofficial event centered on the city’s wealthy residents, who would draw attention as they exited church on Easter Sunday and promenaded downtown in their best hats and attire for lunch.
“Music followed the paraders wherever they went,” the report said of that particular gray, chilly Sunday.
The Drake Hotel’s organist played “In Your Easter Bonnet” and other “gay songs of the day,” as Chicago’s elite strolled past on their way to lunch. Over at the Casino Club, a Hungarian orchestra “sang out Viennese waltzes” for a crowd of “several hundred fashionables.”
Hat styles included a “high-crowned lime-green straw with purple, green and red poppies blossoming out of the stop” and a navy straw visor “encircled with roses and blue cornflowers,” among many others.
