Buying In - (Page 35) buying in 35 Founded in 1998, the society had within seven years signed up about 850,000 members worldwide. It also operated a three-thousand-square-foot retail shop, had twenty-six licensing deals, and sold hundreds of products through department and specialty stores as well as its website, including at least thirty varieties of actual red hats. Cooper told me that this is not what she expected to happen. The story goes that she bought a red fedora in a Tucson, Arizona, thrift store in 1997, on a whim. Later she came upon a poem by Jenny Joseph, called “Warning,” about an older woman who wore red hats and purple clothes. She gave red hats to a few friends as birthday gifts and rounded up a group to wear the hats, along with purple dresses, to a tearoom. Subsequent gatherings followed, a handful of articles sparked the formation of more chapters, which led to more media stories and more chapters—thirtyfive thousand of them, in fact. What these women do when they meet is, basically, goof off. Fred Cohen of the film production company Creative Presentations has, while working on a Red Hat documentary, recorded Red Hatters engaged in everything from drum circles to fashion shows to dance parties to huge conventions where they gather in the thousands. He has also interviewed health care experts on the benefits of all this open-ended fun and belonging. “Something about being in a purple dress and red hat makes them free,” he told me. Early on, Cooper recalled, members wanted T-shirts and sweatshirts— as well as help finding suitable hats. When third-party companies started to pop up to meet those needs, Cooper figured it was time for the Red Hat Society to start making its own official products. It may seem odd that a social group would require a commodity element. But as Hebdige
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