Queen Elizabeth II in a hat with the most wonderfully shaped brim on July 20, 1952 for a visit to Hemel Hempstead to lay the foundation stone of St Barnabas Church.
Image from Getty as indicated
Royal Hats
The Bold, Beautiful and Bizarre World of Royal Millinery
Royal Hats 
A very unique two-tone affair here. I found a 31 second video (sorry, it’s b/w) of HM listening(?) to the speaker.
Years ago, a friend of ours told our parish priest “Father, after 5 minutes of your sermon, I’ve mentally moved on with my day; I’m making a grocery shopping list in my head, and trying to decide which load of laundry needs to be washed first.”
Jimbo, the Duke of Edinburgh also had very strong views on the length of sermons and told an incoming Archbishop of Canterbury that they should be no more than 8 minutes long. He did listen closely though as he’d dissect the sermon with them over lunch.
What a great find! I can’t think of another hat she’s worn like this.
This hat looks more like the styles of the 1950s. The few hats in the more recent retrospective posts (the lovely fan hat excepted) seemed to have an air of post-war ‘compromise’, shall we say.
As others have noted, this frames HM’s face beautifully. And a lovely reverse echo of the beautiful neckline too.
The Getty caption on this photo is what struck me: “Queen Elizabeth II paid her first visit to…” Back then, practically EVERY visit was likely her first visit as Queen. Has anyone ever tabulated the many places visited by HM ranked by most to least?
This is such a pretty hat on the young Queen Elizabeth. It frames her face so beautifully and sets off the whole outfit so well. I just love it.
Exactly!
Me too. Until searching for this series, I don’t think I had seen it before.