At the 2026 Easter Parade and Bonnet Festival, Pagentry, Pathos, and So Very Many Pastels

Though the sky over Midtown Manhattan was gloomy—the puckered, ash-colored clouds eventually yielding a light April rain—the scene outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral this Easter Sunday was intensely colorful, as participants gathered for the annual Easter Parade and Easter Bonnet Festival.

Swanning along Fifth Avenue from 49th to 57th Street, the hatters and bonnet-omanes came young and old, human and canine, solo and in families, their sundry headwear embracing motifs both familiar (eggs, flowers, rabbit ears, wicker basketry, pastels of every conceivable description) and bespoke. Where one parader wore a headpiece fashioned from a heap of plastic waste, raising awareness around the crisis of overconsumption, another donned a fascinator, collar, and skirt feathered with decommissioned MetroCards. (Look—they have to go somewhere!)

Happily, photographer Amir Hamja was there to capture all the giddy goings-on. See his snapshots from the 2026 Easter Parade and Easter Bonnet Festival in New York right here.