Top that — history of hats at William Hickling Prescott House

We may think of splendid women’s hats as the arena of Black churches, royal events, and the Kentucky Derby. But for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, nearly every woman wore a hat.

“You would not leave the house without having your head covered,” said Elizabeth Weisblatt, collections manager and curator for the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a nonprofit promoting historic preservation.

“By Her Own Design: Women Milliners of Boston” at William Hickling Prescott House, the organization’s headquarters, traces millinery trends from 1872 to 1929. Featuring fewer than 50 hats drawn from the Dames’s more than 7,000-piece costume collection, it’s a quick jaunt through fashion history.

Millinery was the rare business that was socially acceptable for women to run, said Weisblatt. “The women who made the hats were predominantly immigrants or young,” she said. “The women selling them would be American or French.”

Crafting hats was hard work. To dye plumage, “Home Millinery, Madame Margariete’s Manual” advised in 1920, “Take [a] tube of paint and dissolve it in gasoline, and dip the feather in it.”

Feathers were so hugely popular that the Massachusetts Audubon Society was founded in 1896 due to outrage that waterbirds were being slaughtered for plumage used for women’s hats.

A section of the show looks at French millinery, including a dishy, broad-brimmed, deep rose chapeau from milliner Marie Crozet dating to 1902-06. But about half the hats on display were made in Boston, said Weisblatt, where the aesthetic was different. “Boston had more color variation” in a single hat, she said.

Toppers range from those bought at the Jordan Marsh department store to elaborately tailored ones from millineries such as L.P. Hollander (launched by Maria Theresa Baldwin in 1848) and Madame Celeste (also known as Calistia Sweetsir Pingree, who set up shop with her husband in 1891).

There are simple straw bonnets as well as ornate, plumed, and beaded velvet numbers. Each balanced a woman’s overall silhouette, including dresses and hairstyles. Petite hats, like Madame Howard’s black velvet peacock bonnet, countered ballooning dress sleeves and bustles in the 1890s. In the 1920s, bobs peeked out from under bell-shaped cloche styles, like that of Nellie Rice’s floral embroidered hat.

“By Her Own Design” offers a tale of pioneering businesswomen via a fashion history parade that summons “Downton Abbey.” No doubt, there’s more story to tell.

BY HER OWN DESIGN: Women Milliners of Boston

At William Hickling Prescott House, 55 Beacon St., through Sept. 20. 617-742-3190, www.nscdama.org/news/milliners/

Cate McQuaid can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @cmcq.