In the United States, party hats — those ubiquitous, cone-shaped signifiers of children’s birthdays and summer picnics — have their roots in a less celebratory phenomenon: the pointed dunce caps used as disciplinary tools in schools throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a reminder that even the most unassuming objects can have complex meanings — something that artists, several of whom have turned to party attire for inspiration, have long known. The students of the Bauhaus, the influential German design academy founded in 1919, took their costume parties as seriously as their studies, dressing up as monstrous creatures and mechanical humanoids. And in 1972, the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí designed several fantastical ensembles for the infamous Surrealist Ball, a lavish gathering held at the French estate of the baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild. From there, imaginations ran free, yielding headdresses that resemble, among other things, a rainbow-colored palm tree, a coral reef and an otherworldly drinking helmet.

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Persons: Salvador Dalí, baroness Marie, Hélène de Rothschild, Audrey Hepburn peered, Faye Toogood, Jolie Ngo, Piotrek, Rakeem Cunningham, Alexia Hentsch, Adam Charlap Hyman, Andre Herrero, Charlap Hyman, Herrero — Organizations: Bauhaus Locations: United States, —, Spanish