New Yorkers donned their pastels on Sunday, April 5, bringing a blossom of spring to an otherwise dreary day outside Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the annual Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival.
Starting at 10 am, participants and onlookers alike mingled in the street, exchanging awe at the creativity and flora of their neighbors. Cameras were abundant, as were hats with towering bouquets, mountains of twisted balloons, and eggs of all kinds — by the dozen, of the Fabergé variety, crocheted, hatching dragons, and nestled in hairdos.
The parade originates from its antithesis, an afternoon stroll for New York’s upper class to debut their Sunday best after Easter church service. A tradition dating back to the 1870s, the decorous fashion show has evolved into a rambunctious and all-inclusive pageant of New York’s crafters, artists, and street performers.
“It’s the one day a year where all New Yorkers come out and share their creative spirit,” Shayna Strype, a director and artist working in animation, film, and puppetry, told Hyperallergic. She came dressed as a hot-air balloon for her fifth year attending the parade. Most of her body was draped in a sky-blue fabric sash, while stuffed animal bears enjoyed the basket ride.
Cristian Pietrapiana was joyful, despite wearing trash. The visual artist and painter devoted to portraying the climate catastrophe in his art, wore a hat of plastic waste and held a sign with quotes from the environmentalist Robert Swan. “I love the season of spring, but we have to spread the message,” he said.
Prop stylist and set designer Julie Dumas had more than Easter to celebrate. Dumas’s flowering taxi-cab hat was a camera magnet and a symbol of 10 years living in New York.
“It’s an explosion of spring,” Nina Loove, a self-described cosplayer, told Hyperallergic. She was dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, posing with a single ruby-red slipper perched atop her hat. Standing abreast were the straw-adorned Scarecrow, a spectacle-wearing Tin Man, a bleached blonde Lion, and Glinda the Good Witch if she were a porcelain doll. This was Loove and her entourage’s second time at the parade.
For his 10th year participating in the Bonnet Festival, Eduardo Escobar, an artist and “madhatter of all trades,” wore a lunar creation referencing Georges Méliès’s 1902 A Trip to the Moon. Instead of a rocket landing in the moon’s left eye, as in the film’s most iconic scene, Escobar’s moon was punctured by a giant carrot, patched with bits of moss, and spun 360 degrees on top of his head.
Not all attendees were New York locals. Camille Carrithers and Sheila Morris Jordan flew from Brady, Texas, the day before the parade, wearing western hats transformed with flower wreaths.
Flying in from Burghill, Ohio, mixed-media sculptor Gail Trunick’s head disappeared into a feathered swan. Trunick’s daughter lives in New York, and they have both participated in the parade for six years.
“It’s never been organized or commercialized,” Trunick said of the parade and its community. “We’ve all gotten to know one another, year after year. It’s a giant art show, all in one block.”
A group of five, calling themselves the “Shrimp Cocktail,” agreed with these parade ethos. Proudly posing for a photo in prawn couture, one young shrimp who doubles as a student of art history at Stony Brook University said she was officially baptizing the event “the people’s Met Gala.”
