Another type of small hat was the bumper, which was often woven of straw or formed from felt and frequently came with a veil. Turbans, which had been popular in the 1930s, remained a popular toque during the war years. Some were made of rich velvet and rose above the wearer’s head by as much as a foot. Other more humble creations were built out of cheap rayon and sold by Sears for all of 49 cents.

Snoods and bandanas were even less like hats. These bare-bones examples of headwear, designed principally to keep long hair from getting tangled in machinery, were popularized by various personifications of Rosie the Riveter. For example, the famous “We Can Do It!” war poster shows Rosie in a red with a white polka dot handkerchief wrapped around her head. When Ginger Rogers starred as Rosie in the 1942 film “Tender Comrade,” she wore a crocheted snood similar to ones produced by Lilly Daché.

Of course, women wore actual hats during the war years, too. The fedora was perhaps the most popular traditional hat, mostly due to Ingrid Bergman’s ensemble in the 1942 film “Casablanca.” Also in vogue were floppy felt hats wrapped in plaid ribbon and sporting a single, enormous turkey quill. Finally, in 1944, the head and Paris were both liberated as women wore wide-brimmed hats that were sometimes 18 inches across and made of cutwork felt or tightly woven straw.

Designers and their customers could not get back into the swing of fashion quickly enough. With Europe still rebuilding around him, Christian Dior launched his revolutionary New Look in 1947, which included a line of bowed hats in textured straw. An aspect of the New Look dictated that the crowns of these hats should be extremely shallow—even variations on the cloche were referred to as mushrooms for their squat rather than bell-like shapes.

As the 1940s waned, the cloche seemed to evolve into the close hat, a head-hugging chapeau that usually went without a brim and was popularized in the following decade by Lucille Ball on the “I Love Lucy” show. Feathers in monotones of black or coordinating compositions of reds, oranges, or greens often crowned these understated beauties. For some women, though, even a close hat was too much toque for one’s head. For them, a bandeau of fake fur was enough.

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