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Red Hat Society
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Red Hat Society

A detailed explanation of Garter Day and who's who can be found on our 2006 Garter Day page.

2006 Garter Day

Special Thanks to Patsy Knight for giving us this years tickets to Garter Day at Windsor Castle. This is one of our favorite experiences from all our travels in Europe.

Red Hat Society: The society is a social organization founded in 1998 for women over 50. As of October 2006 there are about 1.5 million registered members in over forty thousand chapters in the United States and thirty other countries.

The founder of the society is Fullerton, California artist Sue Ellen Cooper, who in 1998 gave a friend a 55th birthday gift consisting of a red fedora she had bought a year earlier at a thrift store along with a copy of Jenny Joseph's poem, whose opening lines read:

"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me."

Cooper repeated the gift on request several times, and eventually the group all bought purple outfits and held a tea party. At first spreading by word of mouth, the Society received national publicity in 2000 through the magazine Romantic Homes and a feature in the Orange County Register that ran nationally. Cooper then established a "Hatquarters" to field the hundreds of e-mail requests for help starting chapters. She now serves as "Exalted Queen Mother", and has written two best-selling books about the Society.

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The Red Hat Society fondly refers to itself as a "dis-organization" with the aim of social interaction, and to encourage fun, silliness, creativity, and friendship in middle age and beyond. The Society is not a sorority or a voluntary service club. There are no initiations or fundraising projects.

A founder or leader of a local chapter is usually referred to as a "Queen". Members are called "Red Hatters". Members 50 and over wear red hats and purple attire to all functions. A woman under age fifty may also become a member, but she wears a pink hat and lavender attire to the Society's events until reaching her fiftieth birthday.

Website: http://www.redhatsociety.com/