At every large Queen’s Bench gathering, you can spot them: an array of colorful hats of various shapes, sizes, and designs, worn by the women who have led this organization. Traditionally, our Past Presidents wear hats to special events after their tenure on the Queen’s Bench Board, a nod to the cloches worn during the American suffrage movement and the era of our 1921 founding.

When you see a call in our advertising for Past Presidents to wear their hats, it is a nod to this century-old tradition. And if you are attending one of our larger events for the first time, the hats are your guide: the women wearing them have each served as President of Queen’s Bench.

In 2024, Queen’s Bench formalized this tradition with the Presentation of Hats Ceremony, honoring each Immediate Past President as she completes her service on the Board of Directors.

1. The presentation. Led by the President on behalf of the Board of Directors, the Immediate Past President is formally thanked for her service on the Board and presented with her hat, selected by members of her prior board.
2. The remarks. The Immediate Past President gives remarks reflecting on her tenure of service to Queen’s Bench.
3. The tradition continues. She wears her hat to future Queen’s Bench events as a symbol of her enduring leadership, joining the Past Presidents who came before her.

The choice is rooted in the same history as our colors. During the suffrage campaign, elegant millinery was part of the movement’s strategy: suffragists marched, gathered, and spoke publicly in fine hats to counter caricatures of them as unfeminine radicals, presenting themselves as composed, capable, and impossible to ignore. In an era when a hat signaled a woman’s standing in society, suffragists made theirs signal that women demanding the vote deserved to be taken seriously.

Then came the cloche. The close-fitting, bell-shaped hat swept America in the 1920s, the first decade in which American women could vote, and it became the emblem of the “new woman”: independent, professional, and newly enfranchised. That is the very generation of women who founded Queen’s Bench in 1921. When our Past Presidents don their hats today, they wear the symbol of the first women who could vote, could practice, and could lead.