Crafty: Zora Neale Hurston Would Turn Her Rejection Letters into Stylish Little Hats
Fashion icon
Writer, folklorist, and avid hat collector Zora Neale Hurston dealt with rejection from publishers all the time, despite being one of the most celebrated figures of the Harlem Renaissance.
But creative minds never rest nor does the fashionista's eye ever blink. With little to no money to her name, she decided that she would turn adversity into cash.
Instead of calling it quits and moving back to Notasulga, AL, she would turn her rejection letters into stylish little paper hats that she would sell to women from Eatonville, FL all the way up to Harlem when she wasn't pursuing her dream of writing fiction.
But there is something crafty, charming, and positively inspiring when we examine these makeshift paper hats from early in her career.
"If ever there was someone who made something from nothing, it was Hurston," said fashion entrepreneur and hat historian Tricia Campbell. "There is record of her selling these paper hats for 5 to 10 dollars each, which would have been big money at the time."
Always one to wear what she called an "audacious" hat, Hurston began wearing and collecting hats because as a young struggling author, she thought it made her look more refined. Later in her career, her expensive and lavish hats would come to symbolize a reimagining and redemption of her cultural blackness.
But there is something crafty, charming, and positively inspiring when we examine these makeshift paper hats from early in her career.
Campbell has several of these “Rejection Letter Hats” herself and they are among her prized possessions within her collection which boasts over 12,000 hats.
There's the early rejection letter for 1930's Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts which she turned into a little Pillbox Hat, or the rejection letter for Jonah's Gourd Vine, her first novel which she turned into a French-style Cloche.
But no hat in Campbell's collection is more valuable than the lengthy rejection letter she received from Harcourt Brace for 1937's Their Eyes Were Watching God, which spanned over 8 pages where they call the novel "too sensual," "childishly burlesque," and "unconvincing."
For that hat, Hurston did something special and made a fun floppy sun hat for the beach, using a four-inch wide brim that would cover all of her head and shoulders.
The novel, and the hat, would go on to become her most famous works.
"Now this one is special," said Campbell delicately removing it from the box. "A bit fun, and very sexy. I imagine Janie Crawford, the protagonist from the novel, just throwing this one on with a little sundress and just being flirty walking by her would-be third husband Tea Cake."
"A paper hat like this would help a woman like Janie (and possibly Hurston herself) ripen from a voiceless teenage girl into a vibrant woman with an awareness of her own power, her own sexuality, and her own destiny."