Description
– Check out the YouTube video of the Red Hat Society
🪐 Hats off to Ruby Red Hat, whose fabulous fashion sense makes these beautifully illustrated playing cards heads above the rest. Decorated with red hats of every style, this regulation 54-card deck is suitable for all card games.
🪐 Comissioned deck by the Red Hat Society (RHS), which is an international social organization that was founded in 1998 in the United States for women age 50 and beyond, but now open to women of all ages
🪐 In the fall of 1997, Sue Ellen Cooper, an artist from Fullerton, California, purchased an old red fedora for $7.50 from a thrift shop during a trip to Tucson, Arizona. When a good friend was nearing a 55th birthday, Cooper cast about for an idea for an original gift.
🪐 She was inspired by a well-known Jenny Joseph poem, “Warning”, popularised in the US after Liz Carpenter wrote about it in a Reader’s Digest article and it was picked up by the greetings card industry. The poem begins “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.” Cooper wanted to encourage her friend to grow older in a playful manner. She gave her friend a red hat of her own suggesting that she keep it as a reminder to grow older playfully and on her terms.
🪐 Cooper repeated the gift on request several times, and eventually several of the women bought purple outfits and held a tea party on April 25, 1998, at which the Red Hat Society began.
🪐 After spreading by word of mouth, the society first gained national attention through an article written by journalist Lori Basheda for The Orange County Register that was reprinted in newspapers across the country.
🪐 Cooper then established a “Hatquarters” to field the hundreds of e-mail requests for help starting chapters. She now serves as “Exalted Queen Mother”, and has written two best-selling books about the Society, The Red Hat Society: Friendship and Fun After Fifty, published in April 2004 and The Red Hat Society’s Laugh Lines: Stories of Inspiration and Hattitude published in April 2005.
🪐 The Red Hat Society membership increased through word of mouth, growing from two chapters in 1999 to over 25,000 members.
🪐 A founder or leader of a local chapter is usually referred to as a “Queen”. Members 50 and over are called “Red Hatters” and wear red hats and purple attire to all functions. A woman under age 50 may also become a member, but she wears a pink hat and lavender attire to the society’s events until reaching her 50th birthday. She is referred to as a “Pink Hatter.” During her birthday month (or the society’s birthday month of April), a member might wear her colors in reverse, i.e., a purple or lavender hat and red or pink attire.
🪐 Both Red and Pink Hatters often wear very elaborately decorated hats and attention-getting fashion accessories, such as a feather boa, at the group’s get-togethers.
🪐 The society’s events vary depending on the chapter, but common activities among Red Hatters include hosting tea parties, playing games, going to movies or theater events, traveling on excursions and to larger RHS conventions
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