The tiptop in fashion

Crowns.

They wear crowns.

Big, beautiful elaborate hats bejeweled with imported crystals that dance in the sunlight streaming through stained glass windows.

Fancy creations abloom with iridescent plumes, oversized roses and sweet violets, perfect for pulpit or pew.

Elegant chapeaux trimmed with fur, Belgian lace or flat-back pearls that stand out nonpareil in church.

In Southern California, epicenter of casual dressing, there are exquisite holdouts, women who adhere to the traditions of their mothers and grandmothers, women who wouldn't dream of leaving home on a Sunday morning without covering their heads, women who wear fine hats, head-turning and, perhaps, one of a kind. And there is no better time to witness their splendor than Easter Sunday.

Step into the cathedral of West Angeles Church of God in Christ on Crenshaw Boulevard. Visit Victory Missionary Baptist Church south of downtown. Worship at Apostolic Faith Home Assembly on West Adams, a boulevard of churches. And don't forget a hat.

"My mother would turn over in her grave, if I [went] to church without a hat. She would say, 'I taught you better!' " Bettye Smith says while shopping at Leola's Hats and Accessories on Florence near Crenshaw.

Smith, 81, came of age in Fort Worth, during a more formal era when black ladies always wore hats to church. As a child, she was taught that "a church hat is not supposed to attract attention to yourself. You're sinning if you take attention away from the service, if they're watching your hat."

But those rules have changed.

"You can still be a holy woman and you can be very fashionable," says Anthea Butler, an associate professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University whose specialty is African American religious history, who also heads the Society for Pentecostal Studies.

Sonja Robinson, who specializes in church hats at her stores, One-of-a-Kind Hats on Slauson Avenue and on Crenshaw Boulevard, says current fashion calls for heavy ornamentation: crystals, rhinestones, feathers and even fur. And Robinson is nothing if not steeped in the culture of hats: She belongs to West Angeles, which is known for its hats. Indeed, when the Church of God in Christ denomination holds its annual convocation in Memphis, she says, some women who attend take a dozen or more.

"What color are you wearing for Easter?" Robinson's daughter and co-designer Meeka Davis asks a regular at the One-of-a-Kind boutique on Slauson, near the pockets of black affluence in Ladera Heights, View Park, Windsor Hills and Baldwin Hills.