Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article
Historic Treasure of the Week -
September 8, 2002
By Janice Lewis
Vigo County Historical Society
Hats topped off our sense of style
In this day and age when the only hat most people own is a baseball cap it’s worth a visit to the Vigo County Historical Museum to view the array of head coverings worn in the past.
Since the beginning of recorded history, man has found many reasons to cover his head. Four-thousand-year-old tomb paintings found at Thebes in Egypt portray a man wearing a coolie-style straw hat implying that the first hats were fashioned for protection against the sun.
Throughout the ages, hats have conveyed social status and made fashion statements. In medieval Europe, one could ascertain a person’s occupation, religion, place of origin and position in the community hierarchy simply by noticing how he covered his head.
Hats and helmets have played a role in the military for a long time. When wars were fought hand-to-hand, sometimes the only way to identify the enemy was by the helmet he wore. Even today, military personnel wear their rank on their caps and hats.
The Jewish yarmulke, the Middle Eastern Hijab, the Catholic mitre and the nun’s coil are head coverings that symbolize religious affiliations. During rites of passage, people have marked the event by wearing mortarboards, mourning bonnets and wedding veils.
Throughout time, women have made fashion statements with chapeaus of all sizes, fabrics and decorative paraphernalia. Men also have adopted hats, though not as elaborately, to make statements of profession and social status.
An excellent example of men’s accessories making a statement is the top hat or topper. The silk top hat was fashioned by John Hetherington, a London haberdasher, in the 1840’s, and it caused quite a stir the first time he wore it. A contemporary newspaper reported: “Passerbys panicked at the sight. Several women fainted, children screamed, dogs yelped and an errand boy’s arm was broken when he was trampled by the mob.”
Until that time, “toppers” were made of beaver and had a lower crown. In spite of its awkwardness, it became the hat that dominated the 19th century, especially after it was adopted as the hat of choice by Prince Albert of England. The “high hat” gave a man a look of self-assurance and became a designation of snobbery and arrogance. The aristocracy wore top hats for business, pleasure and formal occasions, pearl gray being the color choice for daytime and black for night.
English historian James Laver noted that “an assemblage of toppers looked like factory chimneys, thus adding to the mood of the industrial revolution.”
In France during the middle 1800s, top hats were so outlandishly tall that they overcrowded cloak rooms. Antoine Gibus rectified this problem when he invented the collapsible opera hat. To accommodate the compressed toppers, shelves were built under theater seats so patrons could store them during a performance.
Although rarely worn today, the top hat is still a symbol of high society. Even Walt Disney drew upon its influence when he gave Uncle Scrooge a top hat sanctioning him as an aristocrat and richest duck in the world!
The next time you don your baseball cap and head out the door, make plans to visit the Vigo County Historical Museum and take a look at the fascinating array of hats worn by our ancestors.
The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The Web site: http://web.indstate.edu/community/vchs.