Uncle John says that September is the biggest “hat month” of the year, as some people are wearing them to keep the late summer sun away and others are using them to keep early fall chills away. At any rate, here are the stories behind some iconic head-toppers.
THE STETSON
Ranchers and cowboys wore whatever hats they had on hand. Then during a late 1850s hunting trip, hatmaker’s son John B. Stetson fashioned himself a new hat with what he thought was a ridiculously wide brim and high crown but liked how it kept the sun and rain off of his head and neck. In 1865, he decided to start making and selling that hat, which became known as the Stetson or more broadly, the cowboy hat. Within 20 years, the Stetson Hat Company was an 1,100-employee operation.
THE SOMBRERO
Farmers working the land in northern Mexico under the hot sun wove grass and hay to make woven, cooling, shade providing hats big enough to protect their entire upper bodies. They came to be known as sombreros, a derivative of sombra, Spanish for shade. Mexican ranchers and cowboys adopted the hats, but they had theirs made to last a little longer, built out of velvet and covered in fancy adornments.
THE FEDORA
It’s not entirely known who invented the fedora, but we do know that it was inspired by the 1882 play Fedora, starring superstar stage actor Sarah Bernhardt as Princess Fedora, a royal who wore a bespoke hat: made of felt with a narrow brim, a creased top, and pinched on the sides. When American men almost universally wore hats in the early and mid-20th century, the fedora is the one they wore. It’s still the best-selling hat in the U.S. not counting the next entry on the list.
THE BASEBALL CAP
In 1849, the New York Knickerbockers became the first baseball team to make hats part of their official uniform, and they used nondescript wide-brimmed straw hats. Over the next few decades, players wore various sun-blocking implements they could get their hands on, like boating caps or jockey hats. Looking for a good hat in the late 1860s, the Brooklyn Excelsiors found a sporting goods company called Peck & Snyder which offered a hat called the No. 1. Based on the visored caps worn by Civil War soldiers on both sides a few years earlier, they had a round, fitted crown (so they didn’t fly off easily) and a long brim that protected from the sun.
