Fashion changes claim Foxboro hat shop as latest victim

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Diane Moynihan mailed the letter last Thursday. On Friday the phone began to ring. By Saturday people were lined up at her door.

The letter wasn't easy to write.

"Dear Customers and Friends," Moynihan began. "It has been with true pleasure and pride that my family and I have been able to serve you these last 64 years . . . It is with mixed emotion that we announce the time has come to close the Foxboro Hat Shop."

The Foxboro Hat Shop has been a place out of time. Located on the second floor of what was once a Grange hall, a school, then a community theater, it is hardwood and history, high ceilings and big windows, creaky stairs, whining ceiling fans. It's a room packed with lace, hats, veils, scarves, gloves, handbags and pins, ribbons, bows and a million yesterdays.

The hat racks were made by Moynihan's grandfather 60 years ago. Ribbons and lace, yards of them, are stored in boxes.

And hats aren't just bought here. They're designed, created and re-created.

Most women don't wear hats anymore - not fancy hats anyway, or fancy gloves. It is a different world than it was in 1937. But not here, and that has been the magic of this place. Like a church, it hasn't changed. And like a church, it had followers. I was one.

Blame my mother. She wore hats. For years she managed Wethern's, a hat store in Quincy Square, and then she managed the Wethern's at South Shore Plaza, and when that store closed she managed the hat department at Sheridan's.

Every day my mother wore a hat while working. On Saturday nights, she always "borrowed" two hats, one for her and one for me to wear to church the next day. I have pictures of us in whimsies, little veil things that made you feel like a movie star, and big straw hats with wide brims, and cloches, close-fitting hats my mother said made her feel like a Gibson girl.

When she died and I told the young woman who was writing her obituary that she'd been a milliner, the writer asked, "What's a milliner?"

Even I don't wear hats all the time anymore. Still I buy them. They're a pick-me-up. Not my mother's arms, exactly, but her hand on my shoulder. "A hat makes the outfit," I can hear her say.

"It hurt us when Rochelle's went out of business," Diane Moynihan said, explaining her decision to close the shop her grandfather started. Rochelle's was a discount store and a draw for a lot of years. "People would go there and then come here."

But not enough people.

Last April, USA Today included the Foxboro Hat Shop in its list of "10 Great Places to Find a Hat Fit for a Parade." Despite this publicity and faithful clientele, business has been slow. It wasn't on Tuesday with the half-price sale an incentive to shop.

"I've been coming here ever since I can remember," said Winnie Bourque, walking away with two shopping bags full of hats, the big white boxes, a signature of the shop, already gone.

"I ordered my wedding veil and headpiece here," Janet Souza said.

"There are things in life you count on," said Ron Petrocchi, who with his wife Loretta has been trekking from Johnston, R.I., to this shop for years.

In a few weeks, when Diane Moynihan closes the door for the final time, that ever-shrinking list of things you can count on will be even shorter.