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Going to hear Caroline Rennolds Milbank speak won’t be like that trunk show at Individualist—you won’t be overwhelmed with a desire to buy. It’s pretty hard to imagine wearing, say, Moschino’s fabulous fighter-plane hat from the spring/summer 1988 collection as you stride down K Street. And the appeal of Jacques Fath’s feather-trimmed chapeaux from the ’40s is at this point largely historical. But Milbank, whose book The Couture Accessory is a treasure trove of information about 20th-century designers, not to mention lovely photos, should have plenty to say to keep us notoriously button-down Washington women engaged. Did you know, for example, that Jeanne Lanvin showed gilt-trimmed gas-mask covers when her country was on the brink of war? Or that the ’40s fad for ballet slippers may have had as much to do with rationing as with fashion? The appeal is all intellectual at 7 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Hammer Auditorium, 500 17th St. NW. $14. (202) 639-1770. (Caroline Schweiter)