Fashionable few don their Easter bonnets

The Easter dinner table was bereft of bonnets at Atlanta restaurants Sunday. What few women did wear hats signaled the season.

Virginia Elliott of Newnan went into her closet dedicated to hats and selected one to complement her purple suit accented with rhinestones.

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Vino Wong/wwong@ajc.com

Christine Bates, of Dallas, wears her floppy spring hat she bought at Stein Mart at Paschal’s.

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Vino Wong/Vino Wong / vwong@ajc.com

Gwen Darden, of Atlanta, with her designer bonnet at Mary Mac’s.

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Vino Wong/vwong@ajc.com

Virginia Elliott of Newnan, wears her spring hat that matches her outfit at Paschal’s.

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Vino Wong/vwong@ajc.com

Crea McPeters, 5, of Duluth, wore bunny ears with aplomb.

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Vino Wong/Staff Photographer

Edee King, 70, of Atlanta, sits at the bar area at Colonnade.

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“Today I wanted to go with purple. It suits the occasion,” she said. “I was going to wear another hat.”

Her husband Emmett Elliott Jr., though, suggested a perfectly matching purple one accented with rhinestones. She went with his suggestion for the hat she wore to dinner at Paschal’s Restaurant after church.

Gwen Darden of Atlanta owns 15 designer circle hat ensembles that include a matching pin and cummerbund. For Easter dinner at Mary Mac’s Tea Room with her husband, attorney George Darden, she selected a gold lame accented ensemble.

“I normally don’t like hats, but these are very comfortable,” Darden said.

While most girls opted for headbands and ribbons, Crea McPeters, 5, wore her Easter bunny ears headband as confidently as a hat at church and during the Duluth family’s dinner at Mary Mac’s.

“Oh, my gosh, they’re so cute,” she said, pronouncing that she plans to wear her bunny ears for the next 18 days.

Edee King of Atlanta topped off her outfit with a blue straw beribboned hat, her favorite among the 10 hats she owns. Born Edward King, she describes herself as “Atlanta’s token straight drag queen.”

From her seat in the Colonnade Restaurant, King said she thinks the scarcity of chapeaux is ominous. “The downfall of every great civilization came about when people became casual in their clothing and attitude,” she said.