Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
A fascinator is a small arrangement of feathers, sinamay, flowers or veiling on a headband, comb or clip, worn instead of a hat at formal occasions. This page defines the term, traces its older meaning as a lace head shawl, and separates it from the cocktail hat it descends from.
A fascinator is a small decorative headpiece, worn in place of a hat at formal occasions, consisting of an arrangement of light materials — feathers, loops of sinamay, silk flowers, veiling, beads — fixed to a headband, comb or clip. It sits on one side of the head, tilted forward, and its function is purely decorative: it neither covers the head nor shelters it. Fascinators are millinery, made by hand by the same trade that makes hats, and they are the standard headwear of wedding guests and racegoers in Britain and wherever British formal dress is followed.
The word is older than the object. In the nineteenth century a fascinator was a soft head shawl of knitted or crocheted lace, worn by women over the hair indoors and out; the name, suggesting bewitchment, suited a light and pretty covering. As that garment vanished, the word lay spare until the small formal hats of the mid-twentieth century — the cocktail hat and percher — dwindled, in the hands of milliners such as Philip Treacy and Stephen Jones in the 1990s, into arrangements of decoration on a band. The old word was revived for the new piece, and royal weddings in the 2000s and 2011 made it universal.
A cocktail hat is a small hat: it has a shaped base that sits on the head, though no brim and little crown. A fascinator has no hat body at all — its base is a fixing, a band or comb, and everything above it is ornament. A hatinator crosses back the other way: fascinator decoration built on a solid, hat-sized base, giving the presence of a hat with a fascinator's lightness, and satisfying dress codes — Royal Ascot's Royal Enclosure among them — that require a headpiece with a substantial base. The three form a scale of decreasing hat and increasing decoration, and the product side of the middle term is covered in the Fashion Influence guide to fascinators.
A decorative headpiece of feathers, sinamay, flowers or veiling, attached to the hair by a headband, comb or clip. It decorates rather than covers the head, and is worn at weddings, race meetings and formal parties.
In the nineteenth century a fascinator was a light, soft head covering for women — a lacy knitted or crocheted shawl worn over the hair. The word moved to the modern headpiece in the late twentieth century, as the small cocktail hat evolved into pure decoration.
A large fascinator built on a solid, hat-like base, combining the decoration of a fascinator with the presence of a hat. The word blends 'hat' and 'fascinator'; hatinators suit race meetings whose dress codes ask for a substantial base.