The hat likely originated very early on in humankind's experience with clothing, as people sought protection from the harsh elements. However, it is certainly easy to imagine that even the earliest forms of headwear served the dual purpose of protection and adornment, functions that still dictate the production and wearing of hats to this day. Hats have a long history as markers of status, occupation, and even political affiliation. Hats make a strong statement about their wearer, but moreso than any other realm of fashion they have proven fluid and unpredictable in nature. The top hat once was worn by men of all stations and class, signaling the transition from the showy aristocracy of plumed cocked hats to the urbane sophistication of modernity, but later the “plug hat,” as it came to be derisively known, was regarded as outdated, comical, arrogant, and even sinister. Now it is regarded as symbolic of a fancier time, and only worn sincerely at events of the highest formality.
Given the significance bestowed on hats in eras past, it seems all the more remarkable that for the first since time since the Roman Empire we find ourselves in a time where it is normal to perceive men and women without hats. For the Romans it was sign of virility and stoicism to face the world uncovered; in our own time, it signifies that we simply cannot be bothered with anything so elaborate as a hat. Fashion moved towards establishing styles meant for sport and leisure as the norm, so that just as the suit we are now familiar with most closely resembles sporting coats of centuries prior, the headwear most commonly seen on people today is an article of sports gear: the baseball cap.
The history of hats is a history of modernity, revolution, economic boom and bust, and war and peace. Headwear both defines generations and defies easy categorization. A look at the types of hats people wore tells us a bit about the time they lived in, and also about what we're saying to the world when we wear them.
Classic Dress Hats
Up until the end of the 18th century, giant plumed hats like the tricorne and bicornes ruled the day. These ostentatious headpieces could be perched safely upon the powdered wigs that were in fashion and were favored by King Louis XIV and Napoleon. The transition into modernity changed all this; revolution was in the air, and the top hat of all things became a symbol of change. Regardless of the modern and revolutionary symbolism placed on them, hats of this era were still made from one of the oldest materials known to man, felt. Fur fiber, shorn from the dense undercoat of beavers or rabbits, was processed and formed into a giant cone of fur, painstakingly steamed and compressed into a rough hat shape, formed over a wooden hat block, sanded and finally trimmed with a silk ribbon or feathers. Hatters used to treat the raw fur with mercury nitrate, over time causing them to develop characteristic tics and twitches and giving hatters a certain reputation for madness. Hat making is now a much safer profession, but little has changed in the basic techniques and materials used. You can still find skilled milliners (fine hat makers) practicing the craft, and haberdashers (that's us) who specialize in carrying and selling their wares.
The Top Hat
Peak Popularity: Late 1700's-1920's
 There is a famous story that describes the first time a top hat was worn in London; its great height and shiny silk luster incited terror and panic in the streets and earned the owner a £500 fine. Despite this inital setback, the top hat would eventually become one of the most popular and recognized styles of hat in history. The original top hat was made from lush beaver fur, but over time transitioned to being made from silk plush. These silk toppers became extremely popular among the urban middle and upper classes during the mid 1800's, evolving into different styles that included the compact Coachman top hat, the tall and straight Stovepipe hat, and the spring-loaded, collapsible opera hat. Along with the Bowler hat which would come along later, the top hat represented the urbane modernity during the height of hat culture. In current fashion, proper use of the top hat is reserved for white tie events like the opera or banquets, but very few hatters now produce the hats in their authentic materials, especially since there are no looms left in the world that can produce silk hatters plush. Now the top hat is used primarily for costume, made visible in popular culture by characters like The Mad Hatter and celebrities like Slash and T-Pain. The top hat symbolizes sophistication, ostentatious wealth, and anachronism.
The Bowler
Peak Popularity: Mid 1800's-1930's
 The Bowler goes by many names, but is one of the most recognizable styles of hat from history. This compact, bubble-shaped hat was created by hat-makers Thomas and William Bowler for William Coke, who requested a low crowned, hard shelled hat suitable for his game wardens to wear while on horseback. The hat was dubbed a "Coke" (pronounced "cook") or "BillyCock" after its owner, but also a "Bowler" after its creators. In Italy the hat was known as a Bombetta, or "little bomb". When the Earl of Derby wore a bowler on his visit to America, the style became known as the "Derby" on our side of the pond. Having evolved from a working hat, the bowler came into popularity as an alternative for the elaborately tall and cumbersome top hat. While still representing respectability and properness, the bowler was a more modest hat than the top hat, and was worn by all classes of men while the top hat was becoming more and more of a rich man's hat. The egalitarian nature of the bowler eventually shifted until it was regarded as a sign of conformity and fell out of fashion in favor of softer hats like the fedora. Prior to the invention of the fur felt western style hat, bowlers were worn by railroad workers in the American west who brought the hats with them from the East coast. During its heydey, the bowler was popularized by the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. In contemporary culture the bowler is usually reserved for costume or subversive wear, like the characters in A Clockwork Orange. While its popularity has waned almost to point of the top hat in most of the world, Bowlers are still produced and worn by women in Peru and Bolivia, where it is known as a "Bombin".
 While the Bowler served as a hat for the masses, the Homburg was a hat popularized by royalty and world leaders. Its size and shape somewhat resemble the softer, more casual styles like the fedora, but its stiffness, lack of a pinch, and hard curled edge make it much more formal, second only to the top hat. Unlike the top hat, however, the homburg remains a viable form of headwear, albeit less often seen than fedoras and trilbies. The homburg was worn by the likes of Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, and King Edward VII, who introduced the style to England after a trip to Germany. The hat was later made famous in the film The Godfather, so much so that the homburg is often referred to as the godfather hat, and was adopted as part of the early hip hop movement as well. The homburg symbolizes class, tradition, and a certain old-fashionedness without being as out of place as a top hat or bowler. It can be worn with black tie or just a nice suit, but it is a very large and imposing hat and looks best on men with broad shoulders.
 The dress hats of the 19th and early 20th century were typically made of a thick, stiffened felt, the materials matching the formality and style of the time. However, the sporting hats being worn were a different story. With wider brims and lower crowns, these hats were made of a soft, flexible felt that could be shaped to the wearer's taste. These hats often were worn with the crown "open", or left in a smooth dome straight off the hatter's block. However the crown was just as often shaped with a pinch towards the front or crease down the middle, sometimes with an indentation over the wearer's head. The soft brim could likewise be turned down in the front or all around to shield the eyes from the sun--or to hide from the sight of others. The natural progression towards a more sport-driven style in the urban environment led to the soft hat being worn on city streets, and hats like the Fedora and Trilby gaining favor over the Bowler and Homburg.
 Next to the top hat, the fedora is perhaps the most iconic style of hat. It's right there in our logo! This hat evolved out of the habit of shaping one's hat to their head with a pinch and crease down the middle, eventually becoming available as a pre-blocked shaped that was as suitable as the homburg for formal wear. This particular style actually originated as a womens hat, with the name Fedora coming from the title character of Victorien Sardou's 1882 play, Fédora. By the 1920's it had been adopted as a mens hat, and now is often associated with prohibition gangster culture of the 20's and film noir of the 40's. The hat made iconic by Indiana Jones is a large brimmed fedora, and a black fedora became the signature accessory of Michael Jackson for a time. Because of the fedora's wide popularity, it is a very versatile hat with a variety of styles and options for wear. People looking to bring back hats into their wardrobe would do well to find a fedora with proportions suited to their face and figure.
The Trilby
Also named after a play, the Trilby is nearly identical to the fedora in style, but sometimes with a shorter, more sharply rolled brim. Hats are more often referred to as trilbies in England, and they can be found in many materials like fur felt, wool, and tweed.
The Porkpie
Mid 1800's-1940's, various resurgences
The Porkpie Hat is primarily recognized as an American design, although similar styles originated in Europe as a womens hat. The flat, oval crown with with an indentation running around the edge gives the hat a strong resemblance to small meat pies popular in England. In the U.S. the name has a more literal meaning: food sellers in New Orleans would take battered old dress hats, trim off the damaged outer brim and reblock the hats over used pie trays. Whether professionally blocked or homemade, this classic hat was a favorite of early jazz and blues musicians and performers. It enjoyed a revitalization in the 1960's in Jamaican and UK ska culture, and later in the mod culture that followed. The hat is not exclusively associated with musicians, however; vaudeville and silent film star Buster Keaton wore a variety of porkpie (he destroyed so many in the process of making his stunt filled films that he resorted to making his own), and physicist Robert Oppenheimer favored the style as well. Nowadays various versions of the porkpie are available, with very flat crowns, rounded telescope shaped crowns, diamond crowns, and brims ranging from very stingy to more formal widths. The crown is lower than on a fedora or homburg, and will suit those with more square faces.
1865-Today
The American West presented unique challenges to the frontiersmen and women moving in from the east coast. These settlers brought their old hats with them--bowlers, top hats, homburgs--and struggled to adapt to the harshness of the frontier. For the shop owner or businessman these hats worked fine, but for the cowboy or worker they proved insufficient protection from the elements out on the open range. Mexican horsemen wore wide-brimmed sombreros, but these didn't always please the sensibilities of the newcomers from back east, and so demand for a new style of hat emerged.
Stetson and the Boss of the Plains
As the son of an established hatter in New Jersey, John B. Stetson was well suited to meet this demand head on. He traveled throughout the West in his youth, to aid his ailing health, and saw firsthand where traditional hat styles failed. He set up shop in Philadelphia producing the hat he called the Boss of Plains; wide brimmed, lightweight, and made from natural colored high-quality beaver fur, the hat quickly lived up to its name. Despite its high price, it became an indispensable item for those living on the frontier. The plain, open crown of the Boss eventually developed into a myriad variations and styles, from the Carlsbad crease to the Montana Peak to the Cattleman style we most commonly associate with the Cowboy hat of today. The wide brims also became curled and rolled up on the sides, another stylistic choice that also made the hat less likely to get blown off the head by winds. Stetson began manufacturing hats with these popular alterations already set in, and, much later, became a leading manufacturer of men's dress hats as well as westerns, but the word "Stetson" remains nearly synonymous with cowboy hat to this day.
Cowboy hats are now made by numerous companies, in countless styles and materials. While the original Boss of the Plains was made from rugged and durable fur felt, cowboys nearer to the border preferred a lighter weight straw variety, resulting in the traditional braided Palm Leaf hats of Mexico being fashioned in a style resembling a Stetson. Companies like Resistol and Stetson itself make cowboy hats from Shantung and Bangora, tough, glazed paper yarns originating in Japan and China respectively, resulting in sturdy, lightweight hats that one commonly sees worn throughout Texas year-round. Western hats are made in everything from Panama straw to Raffia to tough canvas and even leather. Their styles encompass all from the traditional Stetson to more Mexican sombrero styles to the Safari and Australian styles popular elsewhere on the globe. It's impossible to say which style is more authentic, since these hats are defined by their usefulness. The big size and wide brim of the cowboy hat evoke the idea of wide open, rural spaces, and also big personalities. They are associated with Texas, but belong to the American West.
The Gambler:
The Gambler conveys the notion of the Wild West while retaining an air of formality and dress. The crown of a Gambler resembles a pork pie or a telescope crown, but the brim is wider than most dress hats but smaller than most cowboy hats and the edge is curled up in a tight pencil curl. Felt Gamblers are typically made of a thick, stiff felt to maintain the brim shape and curl. Straw Gamblers can come in traditional Western Shantung or light straws like sisal and Panama straw, but these bleed over into the similar style known as a Plantation of Golf hat. The Gambler may be most widely recognized as the hat worn by Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind, but looks great one anyone looking for an alternative style of Western hat. Its smaller brim and lower crown make it ideal for those who look out of place in wide brimmed Cowboy hats.
Like suits, there are few hats that truly suitable for year-round wear. At the height of hat culture, there were a numbers of rules and customs regarding the wearing of summer hats; Americans observed Straw Hat Day near the middle of May every year, upon which it became sartorially acceptable to be seen wearing your straw hat, but not a day before. Straw hats such as the Boater were not just summer versions of felt hats, their styles were distinct from those intended for winter. After the rise in popularity of the soft, light-fitting panama hat, you began to see straw hats blocked in more familiar styles, ranging from fedoras to porkpies. Straw hats have traditionally been seen as less formal than felt hats, but the comfort and protection they offer from the sun makes them appealing year-round in the warmer parts of the country, and these days no one will threaten you for wearing one before May 15th.
The Boater:
Late 1800's-1930's
The Boater is a treasured icon of times long past, and a token of Americana. Also called Skimmers or Katies (or Cadies), Boater hats have a perfectly flat top and brim, and straight sides to the crown with no taper. Several layers of stiffly woven sennit straw give the boater a thick but relatively lightweight wafer-like body. The name Boater comes from the common usage of the hats for sailing or collegiate rowing teams, leading the ribbon on the side to often bear school colors. The boater lent itself to wear during all summer activities, from picnics in the park to day at the races to old fashioned politicking. This style of hat unfortunately phased out with the rising popularity of panama hats which were thinner and lighter in weight. The boater is more dated than other hats styles and gets employed more often as a costume piece than functional headwear, especially for barbershop quartets. Nevertheless, the boater still carries an air of formality, similar to the winter Homburg, and if matched with traditional summer dress wear like seersucker or a light blazer it makes a very fashionable statement.
The Panama Hat
1800's-1960's
Handwoven hats made from the fibers of the toquila palm date back for centuries in their native home of Ecuador. Following the establishment of trade routes out of the Isthmus of Panama to North America, Europe and Asia, these hats became known primarily from their point of export, rather than manufacture, and the name has persisted ever since. The hat bodies are meticulously hand-woven, refined, edged, smoothed and bleached by Ecuadorian artisans in situ; the hats then travel to hatters all over the world who block and trim the hats into familiar styles. Fedoras with wide brims are among the most popular these days, but they were commonly worn in the Optimo style, a simple smooth dome with a ridge running from front to back, a nod to the habit of folding the hats in half to roll them up for transport. A modifed version of the Optimo with a curled up brim and telescope crown is called a Plantation hat, and is very popular on the golf course. These hats were favored around the globe, from Roosevelt to Truman to Napoleon, and were seen in countless classic Hollywood films. The Panama hat suggests exotic locales and the unquestionable style of a well traveled gentleman. With so many styles, Panama's can be found to suit almost anybody.
The Milan Straw:
1800's-1960's
The "sewn-braid" method of hat construction has been applied to many different styles of hat, perhaps most notably the Milan Straw. Milan (pronounced MY-len, not like the city in Italy) originated in Italy but now is produced from a village in China. It's a type of wheat straw which is braided into long flat braids which are sewn together in a spiral from the top of the hat to the brim. These braids often are made with gaps in them to produce a light weight, ventilated hat body. Milan straws are now made from blends of different types of fiber to produce varying patterns, colors, and textures. They tend to be heavier than Panama hats, but are thicker and sturdier by comparison, also offering more option in terms of colors and styles. They are available in the typical fedora style, as well as Porkpie and Homburg shapes. Along with the standard Panama, it's a good idea to have one of these in your hat wardrobe for summer.
More to come
For more information, we suggest reading Hatless Jack by Neil Steinberg for hat culture in the United States, or Mens Hats and Women's Hats from the Bella Cosa series for beautiful examples of hats from history.
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