Bowler hat

Bowler hat, mid-20th century (PFF collection).

The bowler hat, also known as a billycock, bob hat, bombín or derby (USA), is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown, originally created by the London hat-makers Thomas and William Bowler during 1849. It has traditionally been worn with semi-formal and informal attire. The bowler, a protective and durable hat style, was popular with the British, Irish, and American working classes during the second half of the 19th century, and later with the middle and upper classes in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the east coast United States.

Origins

The bowler hat is said to have been designed during 1849 by the London hat-makers Thomas and William Bowler to fulfill an order placed by the company of hatters James Lock & Co. of St James's, which had been commissioned by a customer to design a close-fitting, low-crowned hat to protect gamekeepers from low-hanging branches while on horseback at Holkham Hall, the estate of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (seventh creation) in Norfolk. The keepers had previously worn top hats, which were knocked off easily and damaged. The identity of the customer is less certain, with many suggesting it was William Coke. However research performed by a younger relation of the 1st Earl casts doubt on this story, and it is now believed that the bowler was invented for Edward Coke, the younger brother of Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester. When Edward Coke arrived in London on 17 December 1849 to collect his hat he reportedly placed it on the floor and stamped hard on it twice to test its strength; the hat withstood this test and Coke paid 12 shillings for it.

Cultural significance in the British Isles

Members of the Orange Order celebrating The Twelfth, Belfast 2011

The bowler has had varying degrees of significance in British culture. Popular among the working classes in the 19th century, from the early 20th century bowler hats were commonly associated with businessmen working in the financial districts, also known as "City Gents". The traditional wearing of bowler hats with City business attire declined during the 1970s. During modern times bowlers are not common, although the so-called City Gent remains a stereotype of Englishmen, wearing a bowler and carrying a rolled umbrella. For this reason, two bowler-hatted men were used in the logo of the British building society (subsequently bank), Bradford & Bingley.

In Scotland and Northern Ireland the bowler hat is worn traditionally by members of the main Loyalist fraternities such as the Orange Order, the Independent Loyal Orange Institution, the Royal Black Preceptory and the Apprentice Boys of Derry for their parades and annual celebrations.

Outside the British Isles

The aviation-pioneering Wright brothers wearing their bowlers in 1910.

The bowler hat is a traditional part of womenswear among the Quechua and Aymara peoples of South America.

The bowler, not the cowboy hat or sombrero, was the most popular hat in the American West, prompting Lucius Beebe to call it "the hat that won the West". Both cowboys and railroad workers preferred the hat because it would not blow off easily in strong wind while riding a horse, or when sticking one's head out the window of a speeding train. It was worn by both lawmen and outlaws, including Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, Black Bart, and Billy the Kid. In the United States the hat came to be known commonly as the derby, and American outlaw Marion Hedgepeth was commonly referred to as "the Derby Kid".

In South America, the bowler, known as bombín in Spanish, has been worn by Quechua and Aymara women since the 1920s, when it was introduced to Bolivia by British railway workers. For many years, a factory in Italy manufactured such hats for the Bolivian market, but they are now made locally.

In popular culture

English comedian Stan Laurel took his standard comic devices from the British music hall: the bowler hat, the deep comic gravity, and nonsensical understatement.

The bowler hat became used famously by certain actors, such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Curly Howard, and John Cleese, and also by the fictional character of John Steed of The Avengers, played by Patrick Macnee.

In the 1964 film Mary Poppins, set in Edwardian London, 1910, the London banker George Banks (played by David Tomlinson) wears a bowler. The British building society Bradford & Bingley registered more than 100 separate trademarks featuring the bowler hat, its long-running logo. In 1995 the bank purchased, for £2,000, a bowler hat which had once belonged to Stan Laurel.

The bowler is part of the Droog uniform that the English character Alex wears in A Clockwork Orange to the extent that contemporary fancy dress outfits for this character reference the bowler hat.

There was a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles, California known as Brown Derby. The first and most famous of these was shaped like a derby. A chain of Brown Derby restaurants in Ohio are still in business today.

Many paintings by the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte feature bowler hats. The Son of Man consists of a man in a bowler hat standing in front of a wall. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple. Golconda depicts "raining men" all wearing bowler hats.

Choreographer Bob Fosse frequently incorporated bowler hats into his dance routines. This use of hats as a props, as seen in the 1972 movie Cabaret, would become one of his trademarks.

Notable wearers

• Winston Churchill, Prime Minister during the 2nd World War and later.

David Tomlinson as the London banker Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins. Set in early 20th century London, bowlers were associated with City Gents.

Alex DeLarge in the dystopian film A Clockwork Orange (1971)

• The Plug Uglies, a nineteenth-century American street gang, wore bowler hats stuffed with cloth or wool to protect their heads while fighting.
• John Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin, often wore a bowler hat.
• Charlie Chaplin wore a bowler hat as part of his 'Little Tramp' costume.
• Edward Coke, for whom the first bowler hat was designed.
• Bing Crosby wears a bowler hat in the 1946 film Road to Utopia, among others.
• Alex, the protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, wears a bowler hat.
• Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello often wore a bowler hat.
• Laurel and Hardy are known for wearing bowler hats.
• "Bowler Hat Guy," antagonist of the movie Meet the Robinsons, is named for his choice of hat.
• John Steed of The Avengers wore a variety of bowler hats throughout the series.
• Boy George often wore a bowler hat during the 1980s.
• Oddjob, Auric Goldfinger's manservant, uses his razor-edged bowler hat as a weapon In the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger.
• John D. Rockerduck possesses the distinctive character trait of eating his bowler hat whenever he is defeated by Scrooge McDuck.
• J. Wellington Wimpy wears a bowler hat.
• John Hartford American folk, country, and bluegrass composer and musician wore a bowler hat.
• Notable comic book characters who wear bowler hats include Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan (Marvel Comics), Thomson and Thompson and Professor Calculus from The Adventures of Tintin series, and The Riddler (DC Comics).

Further reading

• Fred Miller Robinson, The Man in the Bowler Hat: His History and Iconography (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993).
• "Whatever Became of the Derby Hat?" Lucius Beebe, Gourmet, May 1966.