Plastic rain hats

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I'm in Melb now too, Jabba, and I never see anyone wearing a plastic rain bonnet. There was one very odd woman (English, aged late twenties and as far as anyone could tell absolutely devoid of personality, hobbies or a social life) who obsessively wore one (AND used a brolly, and had an ordinary coat, and a plastic rain coat) into and out of work at one place I used to work at. She also had a spare rainhat in her desk which she would always offer to lend to other women if they'd left their umbrella at home. I don't remember anybody ever making use of her offer. That was about 15 years ago now.

In the 70s in the UK quite a lot of girls schools (prim and sec) stipulated plastic rain bonnets as part of the school uniform, and banned umbrellas outright. The one up the road from my school did that, it was a pretty strange place all round and we had almost nothing to do with them, and on wet days there was a steady flow of girls from this school in their regulation blue nylon raincoat, school beret with the plastic hat on top and it looked absolutely vile.

-- BJ (bjhaus2001@yahoo.com), May 18, 2002.

I remember my sister had a plastic rainhat all through State School, and she was really rapt when she got an umbrella for her birthday after she started High School. I think most of her crowd preferred the fold-up plastic hat, but only as the best of a pretty crappy lot, better than one of those ugly plastic scarf things like two triangles of plastic stuck together and the join across the back of your head, or a souwester thing.

-- Jabba (sweetfannyadams1956@hotmail.com), May 25, 2002.

I am Jabba's sister, he has it pretty well right. I wore fold-up plastic rain bonnets up to the age of about 10 (now I'm 41) and I quite liked wearing them, especially when I was really little. I still have one in a coat pocket somewhere and I occasionally wear it at a sports event or somewhere when the people behind me won't let me put up an umbrella. Unfortunately my little girl saw me wearing it once, pulling the washing off the line, and freaked right out!

Am I the only person left on earth who would still be caught dead wearing those things, or does my daughter have the right idea? Anybody else have memories?

― Kazmac, Thursday, 30 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

who needs a rain bonnet in the age of energy domes?

― geeta, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My hair is too short for me to care about whether it gets wet or not

― electric sound of jim, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I didn't thinkyou could actually still get these outside of bad Christmas crackers.

― Anna, Friday, 31 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember them very well when I was a young girl. :) I also used to wear the rainettes...Remember them?

― Gale, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rainettes? Sounds like an all-girl band from the early sixties, probably produced by Phil Spector.

No, Gail, enlighten us please, what was a rainette?

― BJ, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry for mis-spelling your name.

― BJ, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rainettes were boots that fit over your shoes, and they were made of quite heavy plastic and fastened by elastic to a button... Believe it or not! :) I wore them to school on rainy days. :)

― Gale, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Obviously back in the 60s Australia, being the cultural/fashion back water it then was (and if Howard has his way will be again), missed out on many of the things taken for granted in more advanced societies, and 'rainettes' were one of the benefits of modern society denied to us, at least as far as I can remember.

Sounds like a real fashion winner. Practical problem: where and how were they fastened to your shoe? Underneath you'd wear them out in the first hundred yards, on top they'd leak like buggery.

― BJ, Wednesday, 5 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

They would fit right over your shoes and they were a clear plastic/rubber. anyway they kept our feet dry. We wore rubber raincoats and hats.( kind of like firemans but in better colors. :) We had the rainettes in 1959 or about that time.

― Gale, Wednesday, 5 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember I really enjoyed wearing my vivid red plastic rain coat with matching red wellington boots, as well as the plastic rain hat. I've always loved wearing red, and I've usually had a red coat and umbrella. I always felt sorry for the boys, who had to wear black. I also recall many girls would have a few rain hats and would lend them out to someone who needed one, but Mum didn't like me doing that. I think she was afraid of the dreaded 'hair nits'. I never had those 'rain boots' Gale talks about, but I remember seeing them in an old mail-order catalogue years later and thinking they looked pretty naff.

― Kazmac, Wednesday, 5 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's a really funny thing, but when I was growing up, my fav color was blue and my sister always wore the pink or red. We were aslways dressed alike but in the color of our choice. When I reached 15/16, I then wore red and black often.

― Gale, Sunday, 9 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm in love with a red rainette

― the pinefox, Monday, 10 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

seven months pass...

My high school in Manchester, UK, in the 1960s, was very strict about rainwear. We all wore black nylon raincoats and forms 5 and 6 were allowed to use umbrellas but they had to be black as well. Before that, we had to wear plain plastic accordion style folding rainbonnets with ties, over our school berets. Once I was caught with an umbrella walking off the school bus by some little toady who told on me and I was given the cane by the deputy headmistress, no questions asked, just did it happen, bend over the desk, hold your skirt up, whack whack whack on the bare bum then sit down and cop a 10 minute lecture about obeying rules. No hints given as to why using an umbrella was such a grievous breach of good order. I think that teacher was a bit bonkers about that particular issue. I had already had run ins with her and still had them after, about smoking, back-chatting teachers, cutting classes, some of it fairly serious stuff, I'd be furious if my kids ever did (especially smoking), but that was the only time I was caned, or even threatened with the cane.

There was another incident I remember. I had left my rainhat at school one day and the next morning it's pouring, so I borrow one of Mum's and this one has little white umbrellas on the plastic, and it's longer and fuller so it covers my hat and my hair all the way down to my shoulderblades and doesn't ride up and pour water down the back of my neck like the one I usually had, but at the gate I was told off by a prefect (from under her umbrella of course) that because it wasn't plain plastic it wasn't uniform.

Now I still hate black umbrellas and I would rather put my head in a bucketful of nuclear waste than in a plastic hat. I wear beige or white trenchcoats and normally use a navy blue umbrella.

― Liz B, Monday, 20 January 2003 01:53 (twenty-three years ago)

three years pass...

"There was one very odd woman (English, aged late twenties and as far as anyone could tell absolutely devoid of personality, hobbies or a social life) who obsessively wore one (AND used a brolly, and had an ordinary coat, and a plastic rain coat) into and out of work at one place I used to work at. She also had a spare rainhat in her desk which she would always offer to lend to other women if they'd left their umbrella at home. I don't remember anybody ever making use of her offer. That was about 15 years ago now."

I think I know the same individual. When I first started in my first real job in the city, about 25 years ago now, I was particularly desperate one lunchtime when I had to go out and it was bucketing down, and I took up her offer. I stuck the rainhat in my handbag and made to go, but she insisted I tie this thing on in front of her and only let me go when it was tied on straight with all my hair under it. When I came back in I peeled it off and snapped it shut and gave it back to her, and she gave me a lecture about leaving it open to dry just like an umbrella.

I wore those rain hats quite a bit as a little girl and even into my teens and I never minded them, but that did it for me. I don't think I've ever left home without an umbrella since.

― Maggie H, Friday, 17 March 2006 05:39 (twenty years ago)

four weeks pass...

I love plastic rain hats. Rainmates, they used to be called.

Today sitting in a train in a heavy shower, I saw a gorgeous Indian lady of about 25 get on wearing a blue plastic mac and a fold-up plastic rain hat, bow-tied under her chin with white cloth ties, and it had little white spots on it that stood out against her jet-black hair. She also had a huge see-through umbrella with white trim round the outside. She sat down across from me and took the plastic hat off and closed it into its folds with a bit of a crack and said sorry and gave me this amazing smile when she saw it had sprayed raindrops over me.

― rainmate, Saturday, 15 April 2006 04:37 (nineteen years ago)

Is this some kind of sick fetish?

― This cunted circus never ends... (papa november), Saturday, 15 April 2006 11:30 (nineteen years ago)

eighteen years pass...

Mum & I are trying to remember what rain bonnets that my Granny wore were called in Scotland. Anyone remember? Tom D? Marcello? You must remember auld grannies wearing them.

― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai), Sunday, 27 October 2024 15:22 (one year ago)

haha I just looked 2 posts up and there it is. A rainmate!

― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai), Sunday, 27 October 2024 15:22 (one year ago)

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