seventy-eight years to November 9, 1939 when the Queen Mother visited evacuated children in the Sussex countryside. Her hat is a fascinating structure with brim curved up around the top of a calot base, seas all covered liberally in feathers. One of the photos below is mirrored from its original (the bottom one I`d guess, based on brooch placement) but the views still give a good look at this most interesting hat.
Embed from Getty Images
Embed from Getty Images
Photos from Getty as indicated
Royal Hats 
Inspecting balloons, October, 1939:
https://previews.rexfeatures.com/preview/7665159xl.jpg?co=rex&wm=1&br=1&sb=rex&sr=51401923&pi=51401923&authorization=date-20171107T014231Z.expires-20171107T015731Z.company-rex.version-01.signature-6c8cb05ced92e530489f581ab1d5ce1188d116744c7551d2f7c9aa9fa611ef8c
Leaving New Zealand House through the sandbags, November, 1939:
https://previews.rexfeatures.com/preview/7665159we.jpg?co=rex&wm=1&br=1&sb=rex&sr=51400726&pi=51400726&authorization=date-20171107T014110Z.expires-20171107T015610Z.company-rex.version-01.signature-61b861187e0d87291cb7b055cb229f3f141da903287f9663659eff7674cbf28e
It is a wonderfully complicated hat. The photos are so charming. I wonder if the little girl is still alive, and if she remembers meeting the warm-hearted Queen? And don’t you love the incredibly impractical sleeves? Her Majesty never “dressed down”.
Great find HQ. Wouldn’t it be a treat to see this hat in colour, with all those different feathers on the brim as well as the upper sides of the hat? a closer look: http://www.horstedkeynes.com/images/largequeen2.jpg
The newsreel footage, though horribly blurry, looks even more intriguing. I’m not sure that the hat is a calot after all: http://www.horstedkeynes.com/history.html#queen
On the webpage, click on the blue link that says” click here to see Movietone news etc”- sorry it’s so cumbersome, but I don’t know how to link this more directly.
To me the hat is an undersized high-crowned wide brim hat, with its all-around wide brim folded back in towards the crown on both sides,(pause at 0:25 and 0:30). In the rear the 2 side folds become sharper, continuing the folds to the edge of the brim at the back as 2 sharp corners. In pic 1 of the post, what we can see to the rear of the side feathers is, I believe, the rear part of the left-hand folded section of the brim.
Mcncln: GREAT video of this Royal outing! Did you catch the little girl, at :35, patting the queen’s thigh to get her attention? Priceless. Click on the 2nd video, and you’ll see a row of young lads bowing and respecting (is that actually a verb?) the queen, while a stand-alone boy couldn’t care less! Kids were the same back then as they are now, and I love it! Thanks so much for adding some sunshine to our day today.
PS: Of all the royals, this Yank would have loved to have met the Queen Mum, even more than Lilibet, I think. (not really!) What an incredible pair of ladies!
Well done Jimbo! I just knew HM would have worn this hat more than once.
BTW, the links you’ve given didn’t work for me, but I found the pics anyway by searching keywords on the Rex website.)
Hmm I seem to have somehow click and dragged my reply to your comment of 6.11.17 at 7:44pm down to your comment at 8:09… i didn’t know one could do that….Mkay I was about to say that I admire the Queen Mother above all for her fashion sense. Unlike just about every other royal female I can think of, the QM (once she reached her thirties) does not seem to have set a foot wrong in terms of her dress. Her taste, her ability to select becoming attire were unerring.