If you were a teenage girl in the early '90s, you might now be hiding a picture of your young self wearing a hat with a big, bright, flamboyant flower.Blame it on Mayim Bialik, star of the TV hit Blossom.
Blossom and her colorfully-cardiganned friends sparked a worldwide fashion trend: flower hats. The most popular was the kind with an enormous sunflower or daisy.
Pretty soon sunflower hats cross-pollinated with other apparel and accessories: there were sunflower hair ties, sunflower pins, sunflower shirts, sun dresses, jumpsuits, pants, bags, Trapper Keepers and everything else. Bright yellow flowers were blooming everywhere.
In my junior year in our all-girls high school, we had this clothing tech class in which we were each supposed to design and sew a dress. At the end of the term, we were required to model our "creations" in our very own fashion show - concept, lighting, stage direction and all. One section went with a sunflower theme for their show, rocking their homemade threads with sunflower/ daisy hats and accessories (Our group didn't have much imagination - we had no theme. I remember I had a rushed, misshapen blue-and-silver dress that I decided to wear grunge-style with a pair of boots and a slouchy denim hat. It was an ugly dress, but I at least passed the class). My classmates thought that the other section's sunflower motif was pretty brilliant and wished we'd come up with it ourselves. I'm glad we didn't. I just wasn't cheery enough to wear a sunflower.
I still wonder whether anyone who sported them at that time actually thought those hats were pretty; I kinda believe girls wore them because of the pressure of buying into the fad.
I always thought it was a silly trend. Yeah, I did. Though I did happen to have a sunflower hat myself. And a sunflower button-down, a daisy hair clip, a sunflower hair clip, a sunflower vanity kit and a daisy pendant necklace. And a shirt with what looked like they were supposed to be sunflowers but were a bit too red. All were gifts, mind you.
