Beaver fur, castor in French was still used as the raw material for felting, but was often mixed for economical reasons with rabbit fur and then called " demi-castors. European fashion was influenced by the French Revolution, when men shedded notions of aristocracy in favor of egalitarianism. Round, small-brimmed and light-colored felt hats, trimmed with simple bands and buckles, worn over natural-colored hair were "de rigueur.
Curiously, the start of the nineteenth century heralded a new age for men's hats in the Western world, which reached its zenith at the turn of the twentieth century, when no gentleman would ever step out of his house without wearing a hat. Men's clothing was dictated by sobriety and egalitarianism and hats fulfilled an important role in subtly marking differentials, personal and professional ones, as well as social class distinction. Top hats, bowlers, derbies, boaters, fedoras, panamas, and cloth caps were all created during this century and lasted well into the twentieth century.
The black silk topper was the first in line. Developed from the high felt stovepipe hat, it became the hat worn by postrevolution aristocracy and an emblem of conservative capitalism. Its origins were far less formal. Like many other hats in history, the topper, also known as " chapeau haut de forme ," was a French design, at first causing outrage and dismay in London in the s. According to the Mayfair Gazette , this new tall black hat "frightened people, made children cry, and dogs bark.
The construction and making of the high topper was innovative, too. The hat was not shaped in beaver felt but constructed from stiffened calico, which was covered with silk plush fabric and brushed around repeatedly until smooth and shiny. Mercury was used to enhance the hat's blackness and was later discovered to cause mental disorder, hence the popular term "mad as a hatter.
The diameter of the flat top varied as well and with it the "waisted" shape of the chimney crown. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a collapsible version of the hat was devised, known as "chapeau claque" or "chapeau Gibus," after its French inventor. This ingenious design could be folded flat-concertina-fashion-and sprung back into shape by the flick of the fist, thus making storage much easier. The bowler hat, called derby in the United States, was designed in at the height of the industrial revolution in Britain.
Like the top hat, it quickly became a classic wardrobe item and a quintessential badge of Englishness. Named after John and William Bowler, hatters from Stockport, an industrial city in the north of England, it was to become the first mass-produced hat in history. A young English aristocrat who wanted a new hunting hat ordered the original design.
Lock and Company, hatters of St. James's in London, since , had been given a brief to supply a brown, round-crowned felt hat, practical and hard wearing, but also dashing and modern. Most importantly, the hat was to be hard and protective as it was to be used for riding. The making of felt hats was traditionally done by small factories in South London, who experimented with stiffening of felt in various ways.
A substance called shellac was perfected by mixing a dark treacle-like extract from a parasite insect found in Southeast Asia with methylated spirit. The felt hoods were manually rolled and beaten in the hot and steaming mixture, before being blocked and dried on wooden hat blocks. The procedure was arduous and dirty, but the key to mass production, making the hat affordable to the middle-classes. The industrial revolution in Britain and all over Western Europe brought important social changes and a shift from agriculture to factories.
Factories needed not only workers but also managers, bookkeepers, and accountants, all new middle-class men who traveled on the newly invented railways wearing black bowler or "iron hats. The earl of Derby introduced the hat to the United States, hence the name given to it there. The bowler held its place in fashion for over one hundred years, its distinctive silhouette making it the most widely recognized hat image in history.
The bowler hat was immortalized in art, comedy, and literature, and it is still exploited in advertising today. Charlie Chaplin made the hat famous in his satiric silent films of the early s, a comedy act, which was followed by Laurel and Hardy a few years later. Samuel Beckett put bowler hats on the tramps in his famous play, Waiting for Godot "He can't think without his hat," says one of the characters.
It epitomizes the link between the Old and the New World, the transition between convention and modernity. During the early twentieth century, a black bowler hat became synonymous with financial affairs and was the headwear for German businessmen during the years of the Weimar Republic , but the Nazi regime branded it " Judenstahlhelm ," outlawed it, and used it in anti-Semitic propaganda. The bowler remained the recognizable attire of bankers in the City of London until the s and is still worn by a few city lawyers today.
The homburg was a German hat, similar to the bowler, but with a higher and lightly dented crown and is named after its city of origin. British politicians like Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden also liked to wear this hat.
The American fedora and the slightly smaller British version, the trilby, are felt hats with dented crowns and brims turned up at the back, and down at the front, shading the eyes. Soft felt hats brought a more casual look to men's fashion, which had changed from black frock coats to suits and raincoats. Franklin D. Roosevelt's fedora helped to change the image of his presidency after the assassination of President McKinley, who had always worn a black top hat. The soft felt trilby was originally a bohemian hat, worn by artists and modern thinkers who wanted to make a stand against the old conservative values of the previous century.
In the s and s the hat took on a gangster role in the United States, which was exploited by many moviemakers and film stars. True, very few reporters wear fedoras these days, but even in the dress-up days of the s and '40s, did real-life newspaper folks ever display a tiny PRESS placard on their hats? Despite the old movies that show police giving Melvyn Douglas or Clark Gable access to a crime scene by virtue of the card in their hatband, real-life reporters of that era did not flaunt their status.
If, for example, their paper had recently been critical of local government then law enforcement officials would not be so eager to give them special treatment. Let's face it, what bootlegger with half a brain is going to mark his jugs with such an open invitation to revenuers? Domestic violence is no joke, obviously, but have you ever seen an episode of COPS in which the battered and bleeding husband states, "My wife We're not talking professional boxing, we mean two guys who start out trading verbal barbs with one another and then let their tempers escalate.
As a rule, when men get enraged to the point of fisticuffs, do they actually take the time to crouch down, pose, and circle around or do they just start punching? It was the de facto transitioning device used in hundreds of old movies, but have you really seen a kid in knee breeches hawking papers by yelling "Extra!
TV would have us believe that these enterprising newsies spread information as quickly as the Internet does today, seeing as the cry of "Read all about it! Even back in my elementary school days — when errant students could still get "the paddle" without fear of the teacher being sued — I never saw any miscreant forced to wear a pointy hat.
Unfortunately for us, the archetypes of masculinity in the early s were people like the lovably scummy Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Federline. But what replaced the trucker hat was possibly even more sinister. Fedora-like hats in the early 20th century were often worn by both sexes.
You can pretty much blame Justin Timberlake for the comeback of the mids. Even though all he was trying to do was bring sexy back, instead he ended up bringing back the sartorial equivalent of Pepe the frog. All three of our menswear experts agreed that the fedora, despite being a classic, holds terrible connotations.
But why? DeLeon says because the fedora is such a classic, men wear it expecting to appear gentlemanly. Justin Timberlake, Ne-Yo, and Johnny Depp, all of whom were popular in the mids, were all channeling the old-school dapper aesthetic to some degree, but it was also simply a dark time for menswear in general.
But as Schlossman argues, prioritizing form over function is basically the entirety of what fashion is. Looking cool is more important to a lot of people, myself included, than necessarily being warm. Though the beanie has been somewhat of the scumbag hat of the past decade, there have been two sharply distinct ways of wearing it: sagging off the back, or rolled up tight. Green agrees that as a woman, particularly on social media, she thinks about this stuff more.
Some journalistic environments are, of course, less flexible. The senior reporter Peter Beaumont has covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia, so his clothes tend towards the pragmatic. Sensible shoes. If people see you in the back of a car you might not get clocked. The one thing everyone agrees on is something with pockets. Lewis agrees.
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