| The
Bowler Hat
The bowler, perhaps, like no other hat before or since,
stands unambiguously as a symbol for an age, a passage
in western civilization. The bowler hat was created
in 1850 for an English game warden, James Coke. It was
intended as a riding hat that Mr. Coke could count on
for hard hat protection as he rode his steed through
his protectorate and looked out for poachers. It soon
became, as Fred Miller Robinson wrote in The Man in
the Bowler Hat: His History and Iconography, “
. . . an emblem through the then-incredible changes
that industrialism was engendering - but as an emblem
of many things, a sign of the times. It became clear
to me very early on that I was studying modern life
by tracing the meanings of this sign. And more, I was
gaining a perspective on modern life that was fair to
people’s real experience of it.” A look
at who was wearing bowler hats, from the mid-19th Century
onward, tells a lot about the this style’s resonance
as a symbol for its time. Professor Robinson said, “As
more and more bowler-hatted figures turned up in my
study, they seemed to express something textured and
true about la vie moderne. Gamekeepers, squires, street
vendors, omnibus drivers, counterjumpers, bankers, union
men, women on horseback and in cabaret acts, detectives
and hanging judges, dictators and bums—-all of
these seemed more important in their relations than
in their variety, however elusive those relations and
seemingly random that variety.”
The variety, of course, is significant.
Hats always denoted rank in society, for example, gentlemen
wore top hats (and cocked hats before top hats) while
the lower social strata wore cloth caps (picture Dickens’
street urchins). Everyman (and woman too if she was
so inclined to push the social-fashion envelope) was
wearing a bowler. Whether the wearer was making a statement
about his liberation, or being glib or ironic, the fact
is that both the union man and the banker wore the same
hat. Something important was being conveyed through
this simple article of headwear. The bowler hat marked
a change, and the “modern man” by wearing
one, wanted the world to know that he was part of it.
The Fedora Hat
 Humphrey
Bogart and James Cagney. Clark Kent and FDR. What happened
to the Bowler and the Top Hat? After all, for most of
the 20th Century, up until 1960 when John Kennedy took
off his hat at his presidential inauguration, men were
not considered dressed for work without a hat. In that
century, the fedora was king (also known as a trilby
in Europe) supplanting, in short order, all other styles
for men. Although the style is mostly associated with
men, the name “Fedora” comes from the heroine
of French playwright Victorien Sardou’s drama
presented in Paris in 1882. She wore the hat style that
would become the hallmark of movie tough guys, Chicago
gangsters, private eyes, newspaper reporters—in
fact by the 1930s, virtually every man who put on a
suit of cloths topped off with a fedora. If you are
reading this, and your grandfather came from either
Europe or North America, chances are he wore a fedora.
Today, the fedora is, hands down, the best selling men’s
style (we’re talking full size hat-not ball caps).
The safari style, a fedora crown with a brim turned
down in the front and the back, received a huge boost
with the Indian Jones movies where Indy’s hat
was emblematic of the man. When we in the hat business
engage our fantasy of men’s hats coming back in
general fashion, we picture a fedora. The fedora was,
and can be again, everyman’s hat—the true
successor to the bowler. Snap the brim and let your
girlfriend know “Here’s looking at you kid.”
The Beret
 Although
worn as military headgear in ancient Greece, the origin
of the beret is traced to the Basques, people living
on both the French and Spanish side of the Pyrenees
Mountains. Centuries ago, the Basques were great fishermen
and sailors, a fact that might explain the appearance
of a very similar hat in Scotland. Both the Scotch tam
and the beret are woven in one piece without a seam
or a binding. The original Basque beret was either navy
blue or red, but today the beret is available in a wide
array of colors.  Few
items of clothing have been adopted by so many varied
groups of people living in different periods of history
as the beret. In WW11, the French Resistance movement,
the Maquis, wore the Basque beret. Because it was the
most common French head-wear, the Maquis was able to
wear it without bringing undo suspicion to this covert
operation. The covert military connotation was propelled
further when the beret was taken up by special forces,
often with the suggestion of ‘undress’ uniform,
such as USA Green Berets, Black Berets (USA Rangers),
UN Blue Berets, to name a few. It was a short leap for
these sub-surface ciphers to have been embraced by artists
and revolutionaries. Che Guevara, a hero of the Cuban
revolution, made the beret a worldwide symbol of the
revolutionary guerilla fighter. The Guardian Angels,
a vigilante group who patrols the subways and streets
of some of the world’s major cities, wears red
berets. And who can forget that American artist and
revolutionary, Monica Lewinsky hugging President Clinton
in her beret?
The Baseball
Cap
 The
baseball cap in an American icon. It is in fact the only
hat style that is an American creation. Its popularity
in the United States received a big boost in the Babe
Ruth era, when baseball fans wore the cap as a badge of
identification with their favorite team. This simple and
functional style was a perfect fit for a country that
glorified democracy and anti-elitism. Baseball, the national
pastime and passion for many people, also had the distinction
of being the only American sport where a hat was an official
part of the uniform. A cap can have the logo and color
of a basketball, football, or hockey team, but only in
baseball can you wear the exact replica of a hat worn
by your heroes on the field. Truckers, farmers and laborers
also incorporated the ball cap as de rigueur in their
daily attire. In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
the baseball cap become a hot fashion item, propelled
in large part because of its affiliation with hip hop
music artists. Like Coca-Cola and McDonalds, the baseball
cap became a symbol of America.  Those
who feared American hegemony wouldn’t get near one,
but those who wanted to identify with American popular
culture wore a ball cap on his, or her head, and sneakers
on their feet. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find
any American without at least one ball cap in his or her
closet or drawer. Imagine that! With the explosion of
digitized embroidery, and advances in silk screening,
the ball cap, with its message on the crown, has became
a walking billboard. With a message on the top of one’s
head, the wearer can let the world know just what brands
they prefer, their political point of view, their favorite
activities, where they’ve traveled, their favorite
band, movie, cartoon character, and their favorite team.
Hence, a perfect headwear marriage, made in America.
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