Tag: hats

CONSTRUCTED RECOLLECTION – FATHER’S FEDORAS

Father's Fedoras, 2022 by Leslie HossackFather’s Fedoras
© 2022 Leslie Hossack

“The first picture I have of me with my father is a small black and white snapshot; on the back is written “8 months old.” In this outdoor photo, my father is wearing a fedora. Obviously, I do not remember that day, but I do have many early memories of my father’s hats. I was 50 years old when my father died and throughout that the half century, he wore fedoras. In the 1950s, they were typically made of fur-felt and came in various shades of grey, brown and black. The soft brim was worn up in the back and down in the front, while the depth of the brim, the height of the indented pinched-front crown, and the width of the grosgrain ribbon varied over time. Movie stars such as Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra made fedoras the icon they remain to this day, but it was my father’s hats that inspired this image.”

PRINTS
Chromogenic print mounted on aluminum composite panel.
30 x 24 in.

CONSTRUCTED RECOLLECTION: An Abstract Autobiography – Childhood Colour Coded.

Selected images from Constructed Recollection featured in online exhibition at:
StudioSixtySix.ca     Spring/Summer 2023.
TheCommotion.ca   21 January – 25 February 2023.

To view more work by Leslie Hossack, please visit lesliehossack.ca

ABOUT Leslie Hossack

Charting Churchill: Lock & Co. Hatters, St. James’s Street, London

Lock & Co. Hatters, St. James's Street, London 2014 by Leslie Hossack

Lock & Co. Hatters, St. James’s Street, London 2014

© Leslie Hossack

Winston Churchill was a man of many hats, literally and figuratively. After several years as Leader of the Opposition, he once again became Prime Minister, on October 26th 1951. He left his painter’s smock and bricklayer’s overalls at Chartwell, his country home in Kent, and moved with Clementine back into Number 10 Downing Street. There they lived from December 1951 until April 1955, when he resigned as Prime Minister at the age of 80.

There are many press photographs showing Prime Minister Churchill going back and forth to Parliament from Downing Street. He is inevitably wearing a white shirt, dark suit, polka dot bow tie, and a black hat such as the one seen in the middle of the above photograph. Although many of his hats were by Scot & Co. of Old Bond Street, he also purchased hats from Lock & Co. founded in 1676.

The image featured above is part of the limited edition collector’s portfolio created by Leslie Hossack to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill. She presents locations that chart Churchill’s personal and political life, from his birth at Blenheim Palace in 1874 until his death in London in 1965. THE CHURCHILL PHOTOGRAPHS are part of Hossack’s larger body of work that explores Nazi architecture in Berlin, Stalinist structures in Moscow, contested sites in Jerusalem, a Cold War bunker in Ottawa, NATO’s Headquarter Camp in Kosovo, and buildings linked to the Japanese Canadian internment during World War II.

To view more photographs, please visit Leslie’s website.  lesliehossack.com