Platt's hats entertain

By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter

It is no secret that Emy Platt likes hats. Maybe the most fashionable woman in Iola, Emy wears a hat for every occasion. She has been seen sporting stylish hats, flamboyant hats, hats with lobster claws.
On Tuesday, as part of the Iola Sesquicentennial celebration, she shared her hats with a willing audience of women (and one man) who laughed at her stories and played the role of models to her many chapeus.
“Fashionable hats: 1950 to now,” was by no means a historical exhibit, but rather a fun frolic through Platt’s personal collection.
“I got this hat,” she said, “on a cruise to Sitka, Alaska.” Platt held up a stylish topper that she had bought in a tourist shop there. “We rowed the rubber dinghy to shore each day,” she said of the vacation where she found that particular cap. Another was purchased at a craft show. “It was meant to go on the wall,” Platt said. “It’s only ever gone on my head.”
Two sister hats, one pink, one teal, were purchased at a hotel lobby on a trip to Bartlesville, Okla. Originally priced at $36 apiece, Platt got them for the clearance price of $2.97 each.
Sales are her thing.
One hat, a violet western style, was purchased at a yard sale. Out on a stroll, Platt met up with the original purchaser, who had bought it for her mom. That woman had never worn it.
“Well, it has a good home now,” Platt said.
Indeed, Platt cares for her collection as though they are pets. She has a special sponge to clean felt hats, and alters the inner hat bands of some to fit better using craft foam. She keeps them carefully stored in plastic bags or boxes.
“This,” she says, pulling out a pale blue stewardess style felt, “is the hat I wore for my going away outfit when Chuck and I got married 42 years ago. It came form Dayton’s, the most impressive store in Minneapolis.
“I haven’t worn it since.”

“I GENERALLY don’t like caps,” Platt says, “I like hats with a brim.” Nonetheless, her collection boasts a couple hand-made, floppy caps purchased on another vacation. And there is the bright-red cap with bulging eyes and claws sticking straight up, commemorating a trip to New Hampshire where Platt and her relatives dined on lobster every night.
“We thought we’d died and gone to heaven, with all that good butter,” she said. When she came off the plane sporting the cap to greet her husband, though, she said “I thought he was just going to walk off and leave me.” The audience laughed.
Platt mused about her collection of souvenir pins, which she uses to decorate her hats.
“You can get them anywhere you go. They cost $2.99 or $3.99 each,” she said. During a reception for a Sousaphone concert, though, she picked up a pin and put it into her hat.
“What do I owe you?” she asked. The reply floored her. “$25!” she exclaimed. “That will teach me to ask next time,” she quipped.
Some of Platt’s hats have come as gifts.
One is a beret styled after the American Olympics team from the 2002 games. Another she got while in the hospital for quadruple bypass surgery. “I didn’t like that a bit,” she said. “I’d never been in a hospital a day in my life.”
While in recovery, she was given a pale camo hat from Desert Storm. Wearing it next time the doctors came in, Platt said she told them “I’m ready to go home.”
In a collection of 100 hats from all over, Platt muses that her most expensive hat comes from Iola itself.
It is a drum major hat from the old high school band, purchased at a fund raising auction.
It cost $75, she said, “And I bought a band uniform top to wear with it. Some day, I’m going to get up the courage and wear it to homecoming.”