safari hat

01

The scene

The safari hat appears in the film’s opening movement, as Karen Blixen’s story shifts from Denmark to British East Africa and the newly married Baroness arrives in colonial Kenya. In these earliest passages, she is presented not as a seasoned settler but as a European aristocrat entering an unfamiliar world with ceremony, luggage, and social formality still intact. The hat belongs to that first impression: a pale, carefully finished piece worn with a tailored traveling suit, before the farm and the country begin to strip her wardrobe of its metropolitan polish.

What the hat says about Karen in this moment is unusually explicit in the film’s design history. Milena Canonero researched the period in Denmark, England, Italy, and Africa, and she has said the real Karen Blixen loved hats; contemporary commentary on the costume notes that the arrival outfit centers the hat as its focal point. Canonero also acknowledged that the film made Karen more fashionable than the historical Blixen, shaping Meryl Streep’s early appearance into something ultra-stylish rather than merely practical. That choice fits the character’s entrance: she arrives composed, status-conscious, and still dressed for display, not yet remade by labor or hardship.

On screen, the hat reads immediately against the Kenyan light. Its broad, light-toned brim catches the bright exterior glare and helps carve Streep’s face into a controlled profile, while Pollack’s location photography places her within sweeping views of the highlands. The image is less rugged than ceremonial, using natural light, open space, and period silhouette to mark Karen as both elegant and out of place.