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A Glossary of Hat Terms, Words, Definitions, And Styles

–By Warner Todd Huston

Welcome searchers of history and information about men’s hats, fedoras, top hats, derbies and bowlers, and, more specifically, Stetson history. If you’ve landed on this page, chances are you found us through a Google search as our pages now rank on the very first page for most search questions on hat history. For that we are shocked and grateful.

One of the reasons you found us, though, is because information on hats is not just hard to find, it is very, very hard to find. But on these pages you’ll find much of what you need to know and resources to look elsewhere for other great info, too.

What you’ll find on this page is a glossary of terms you’ll need to know as you learn about hats. However, before we get to that here is the index of our other pages:

Stetson Quality Designations, Just
What Do Those Xs Mean, Anyway?

Everyone wants to know what the heck Stetson means by those “genuine” Xs. Here we endeavor to answer that question.

Observations on Fedora Sweatbands,
Size Tags, and Fedora Dating Tips

Wherein we help you date your Stetson using the tags noted.

Dating Stetsons by Company Crests,
Stetson Logos and Hat Liners

Because the Stetson logo changed only a finite number of times, here you’ll find yet another way to help date your Stetson.

Dating Stetson Hats By Inventory Tag

These tags are another of the many ways to track down a date of a Stetson hat.

A Tour of My Collection of Antique Stetson Western Hats

This fascinating page has detailed photos of Stetson cowboy hat collection. These hats were made from the late 1800s, through the 1900s.

So… What’s the Deal With Those Stetson Hats, Huston?

This is an interesting walk through my personal collection of antique fedoras. Please enjoy the journey.

Now, let’s talk about some hat terms…

I’ll start with the few important hat names and styles in the general order of their introductions to the world, then go into the others in alphabetical order.

There are two basic types of brimmed hats. Stiff felts and soft felts. Soft felts were always thought of as casual hats, not formal hats, though the soft crowned Homburg model hat was a semi-formal hat and became the hat of bankers and businessmen. in stiff hats, the top hat was considered a formal hat, though they were worn in all situations by all classes of men the whole time. (Some of the charts below were created at The Fedora Lounge)

Fedora: The word fedora seems to have become the term for a soft man’s felt hat because of a stage play written in 1882 by dramatist Victorien Sardou It was titled Fédora and was written for the famed actress Sarah Bernhardt. In the play she wore a large-brimmed, soft felt hat with a long crease down the middle. This hat style became a hit with women for a time but soon morphed into a man’s hat. Of course, soft felt hats weren’t invented with the 1882 play as men were already wearing hats like what would forever afterward be called a fedora. Previous to the introduction of the word fedora, hats like the fedora were called “slouch hats” or simply soft hats. An important feature of a fedora is what is called the “snap brim”–look below for that definition.

Cowboy Hat: This was the style of hat that became popular just before the Civil War and used in the hotter, western climates of the USA. They were originally called slouch hats or a “sugar loaf” hat. They sort of evolved from the wide brimmed Mexican sombrero and became most famous after Philadelphia hat maker John B. Stetson went west for his health and saw some of these wide-brimmed hats. He popularized the style calling his model “The Boss Of The Plains.” It featured a 5 inch or so, rounded crown and a 3 or 4 inch flat brim. Sometimes the brim also had a pencil or kettle curl around the edges. This style was popular from about 1865 to the 1890s when crown heights started to get taller and all manner of creases became added to the taller crowns. The cowboy hat became almost cartoonish by the the 1920s and 1930s when the movie cowboys began wearing 6 and 7 inch tall crowned hats sometimes featuring 5 inch or larger brims. Cowboy actor Tom Mix is most identified with this latter style of cowboy hat. But by the 40s and 50s these hats started shrinking back down to size until they have take the more familiar form we think of today as a cowboy hat.

Stetson: Contrary to popular opinion, a “Stetson” is not a generic name for a cowboy hat anywhere but popular fiction which used the term as a general slang for “cowboy hat.” With his famous “Boss of the Plains” model hat (seen below), John B. Stetson did help popularize the western-styled, wide-brimmed cowboy hat, of course, and he encouraged people to think of the name Stetson when talking hats, but he neither invented the cowboy hat nor was its only producer. Few real people called their hat a Stetson unless it actually WAS a hat made by Stetson! John B. Stetson is the founder of the famous company which began its long life in 1865. John was from a hat making family, too. Along with his father and brothers he helped start the “No Name Hat Company” (amusingly, they could never arrive at a company name so agreed to call it “No Name”) before John stepped out on his own and started his eponymous hat company. Later on, his brother, Stephen L. Stetson, tried to start his own hat company named the Stetson hat company, but older brother John sued him to stop the use of the famous brand name. Later all Stephen L. Stetson hats carried a legal disclaimer that said the hat was “in no way affiliated” with John B. Stetson hats. The actual Stetson hat company ceased manufacturing hats, closed its doors and was defunct by 1974. But the name was sold to a series of companies and now exists really as a brand name as opposed to an actual hat company.

Bowler (or Derby): These hats are a rounded, stiff fur felt hat that were first invented in Britain to serve as a sort of safety hat to wear while riding a horse. They were originally called Coke’s hats after the man who introduced them as equestrian wear in 1849. But soon they became a sometimes semi-formal but widely popular hat with men of all ranks and station. The crown of a bowler–or derby in American vernacular–is so stiff that you cannot alter its shape without damaging the hat. They are what is known as a “stiff hat.” Top hats are also part of the “stiff hat” genre. Even though they were worn all across the American west by every manner of man, they developed a reputation as a city dude’s hat and for many decades were a symbol of a business-minded man of the middle classes. By the 1940s, though, they became sort of derided as the hat of the upper middle classes and by the mid 1950s they had pretty much gone out of style. Bowlers, though, were the most worn hat between the 1880s and about 1930. Photos of city streets, or large crowds during this time period will show more men in bowlers than any other kind of hat.

Homburg: This German-created hat was popularized by King Edward VII who brought one back to England after a visit to Bad Homburg in Hesse, Germany in the late 1800s. It has a brim sort of like a top hat or bowler and is relatively stiff and cannot be altered by the wearer but also has a crown that can be shaped and reshaped at will. The most common crease for a Homburg is a single long dent running front to back with two side dents. The hat became thought of as a semi-formal hat worn by the upper classes as part of their business attire. But Homburgs with somewhat less generous proportions were also very popular for general wear. Hats that look very much like a Homburg–with the soft crown and the permanently formed, curled brim–were one of the most common forms of soft hats until the fedora sort of took over its place as the most common hat style. These Homburg-like soft felts were very popular from the 1880s to about 1930 when fedoras started becoming more popular.

Top Hat: The top hat is one of the older hat styles having first came about in latter part of the 18th century. It is of the stiff hat variety meaning that the brim and crown are stiff, are permanently formed, and cannot be altered without damage. Toppers are generally between 6-1/2 inches and 7 inches tall, but in the early decades of the 1800s could often reach to 8 inches in height. Early toppers had a metal buckle on the outside ribbon instead of a bow. The top hat is often thought of as a formal hat in black, but this style was thought of as a hat for general wear for well over a century and came in a variety of colors and materials. Originally made of beaver, by the 1850s top hat makers had switched to silk and almost no toppers made after that period were made of beaver. In fact, nearly every antique top hat in existence today is made of silk plush because very, very few hats from before 1850 still exist. So, the chances that your antique top hat is made of beaver are slim to nil. Because of that, the top hat was also called “the silk hat” up until the 1950s when they started to disappear from the market place. Interestingly, today’s newly made top hats are again made of fur plush (Christy’s, for instance, calls theirs “melusine”) because the manufacturing technique and equipment to make the silk plush is long gone.

Panama Hat: The Panama hat became famous in the 1800s and remains popular even to this day. It is a lightweight hat made of straw and often associated with summer wear, or use in hotter climates. They are hats made of natural fibers as well as synthetics and often woven by hand. The world of straw hats is a whole milieu of its own and has a host of terms, styles, and regionalisms. Straw hats are somewhat stiff hats, but can be reshaped using steam. Generally, though, once a straw hat has been shaped, that is how it will stay. (See below for more straw hat info)

Straw Boater: A straw boater is another model in the stiff hat category. A boater is a summer hat worn only in casual situations.They have a crown no higher than four inches and a 2 to 3 inch wide, stiff, flat brim. These hats became extremely popular from 1900 to about 1940 when they began to go out of style. It was thought quite gauche to wear a straw boater out of season and in the early days in big cities like New York gangs of teens would steal straw boaters off the heads of passersby in the streets if they were being worn in Fall or Winter. The kids would then smash the hats and throw them into the streets.

Pork Pie: A pork pie is almost easy to confuse with a trilby and a fedora both because it is sort of a hat in the middle of those two styles. The pork pie usually has a shortened soft crown with a telescope crease in it–a dent that is round, pushed in from the top, and then pushed back upward leaving a channel between the crown and the side of the hat. The brim can be snapped, but is usually worn dished upwards all the way around. The pork pie brim is often between 2-1/4 inches to 1 inch wide. This style hat became very popular with jazz musicians.

Trilby: This is another hat style that became famous because of a stage play (and the novel that preceded it). The name comes from a stage adaptation of George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby. This term means something slightly different in England than it does the USA, though. It is common for many styles of fedora to be called a trilby in England, but in the USA it more often applies only to a fedora with a small (under 2 inches) un-snapable brim and a regular, full crown, a style that looks far more like the Tyrolean hat than a regular, full-brimmed fedora.

Tyrolean hat: This is a soft felt, usually with a brim under 2-1/2 inches, and generally in an earth tone color like brown or green. They are also sometimes called a “Bavarian” or “Alpine” hat. These are hats worn by ethnic Germans and Italians–the Tyrol peoples. They usually have a rope for a ribbon on the outside and sometimes feature elaborate feather devices and pewter pins.

A Note About the Tyrolean hat: As suggested by a page visitor, I should note that there is another “part” to the Alpine hats. The gamsbart, or large brush-like fixture you often see on the hats (and as seen in the image above), is a common feature of the Tyrolean hat. It literally means “chamois beard” and was originally a hunting trophy made of the hair taken from a chamois’ lower neck before it just became a common, traditional ornament for the hat. The hats also often have pewter pins and other ornaments affixed to them.

Newsboy or 8 Panel cap: These are also called “cabbie hats” because they were popular for drivers to wear because they don’t get in the way inside the cab of a car or truck. These caps were very popular for boys from the 1890s to the 1950s. They were also popular with adult laborers because they stay on better than a fedora during physical labor. These caps often denoted a lower class person but were also used as “walking hats” by other classes. Another similar style called the flat cap became popular with car drivers because they stayed on better than fedoras as the wind whipped around the driver.

Baseball cap: Wearers of baseball caps should either be boys under ten years of age or people playing baseball. Otherwise you should not be wearing that damn hat. It is a little kid’s hat. If you are a grown man, stop wearing a ball cap. Just stop it. I mean it.

General Hat Terms

• Beaver- The most desirable fur with which to make a hat. Beaver fur is resilient but soft and holds its shape incredibly well. It is also a more expensive material to use for hat making. Most fur felt hats have less beaver and more rabbit fur because of the expense of beaver.
• Bash- This is another word for the creases or dents put in a hat. This word seems to be favored over “crease” in Australia.
• Brim- The horizontal rim of a hat the juts out at a 90 degree angle from the hat crown. These take a variety of shapes, some straight, some curled. In a fedora they are dished and can be “snapped” down or up.
• Brim Treatments- The brim of a fedora can be finished in a variety of ways. Here are the various styles of brim edge: A “raw brim” means the felt is just cut square and there is no treatment at the brim edge; “Overwelt” features the brim edge folded upward upon itself and usually secured with a line of stitching; “Underwelt” is the same as the overwelt but folded downward instead of upward; “Ribbon Bound Edge” is finished with a ribbon sewn into place; “Stitched Edge” means that there is one two or more rows of stitching radiating inward toward the crown; “Cavanagh Edge” is a welted edge with invisible stitching to hold it in place and is a very expensive treatment that can no longer be performed by modern hat factories.

• Campaign Hat- A term favored by the US army from the Civil War to WWII. It refers to a soft felt hat used by field armies. It is most commonly applied to the flat-brimmed, Montana peak-styled M-1911 field army hat. It is also called the “Drill Sergeant Hat.”

• Cone (or Hat Blank or Hood)- The raw, un-shaped felt material used to make a hat.
• Crease- The dents or shapes put into a hat. Also called a “bash.”

• Crown- The top of a hat, the part that fits over a wearer’s head.
• Eyelets- metal devices that are like small grommets stamped into the sides of the hat crown that allow air to flow inside the hat crown.
• Fur Felt- A fur felt hat is a material made of animal fur. It is not made using the skin or pelt. Only the fur. The fur is sheared off the left and the fluffy stuff is put in a machine that spins and wets the fur until it congeals in a felt pad-like material. Various processes are used to finish this felt material. Rabbit or Hare fur is the most used fur for a fur felt hat while beaver is the most desirable. However, furs like chinchilla, mink, vicuna, nutria, and other furs are also used in fur felt hats. Even buffalo fur has been used to make fur felt hats.
• Gibus- a Gibus device is the spring device inside a collapsible top hat that lets it be folded down and then popped back up into full form. The device was invented in 1812 by Frenchman Antoine Gibus. Mr. Gibus wanted to invent a top hat that could be crushed down for ease of storage under a theater seat. For this reason it is also called an “Opera Hat.”
• Hat Steamer- A device that turns water into steam. It helps a wearer reshape the hat’s brim or crown and also helps clean the hat. Not every hat wearer has his own home steamer (such as the Jiffy hat steamer) but all professional hat shops do.

• Hat Stretcher- A device meant to keep a hat held to its proper size or to stretch it out if it contracts. Over the years, hats will shrink in size if not kept in a stretcher. Hats often lose a size or even more over time as the leather, felt, and stitching contracts. It is not uncommon for a hat to be abused in use that it gets larger, too, but shrinking is more common. Hat stretchers come in a variety of styles. Some made of wood, some metal, some plastic. But all feature a device that opens up from a central axis to push the hat outward.

• Liner- A liner is a silk or silk-like material inside a hat that serves to keep stray hairs and hair treatments from staining the inside of a hat. In the old days of hats a liner could be replaced many times inside a hat when they got dirty. Liners first started to be used around the time of the Civil War. A liner also serves as an advertising platform as the hat manufacturer often puts its logo and imprints on the liner. Liners can be sewn in place but most hat makers today just glue them in place with a few spots of glue around the base of the hat. Previous to the civil war a paper label might have been glued into the crown of a hat to carry the manufacturer or seller’s name. Top hats usually had paper liners until the turn of the 1900s.
• Millinery- The profession of making hats, often used to describe the industry for women’s hats.
• Milliner- A hat maker.
• Melusine Fur- Often used for top hats and some fedora’s, a quality fur felt often long haired which is polished and repeatedly brushed until a silk like look is achieved
• Mothing- Fur felt hats are a favorite food of insects. Hats that sit out in the open for years in the corner of an attic or closet are prone to being munched on by the Tinea Pellionella–or the clothes moth–a moth that eats the keratin in natural fibers. They burrow into these fibers (wool sweaters, cotton cloth, or the fur felt of hats) and lay their eggs. Then, when the eggs hatch, the tiny moth larvae eat the natural fibers to grow large enough to fly away. Needless to say, they destroy what they touch. I talk more about moth damage at the Stetson Quality page.

• Opera Hat- See “Gibus” above.
• Pinch- The dents of creases in the front of a hat (see images above and see “crease”).
• Puggaree- A style of cloth “ribbon” or decoration, often with pleats and in loud colors-–that go around the outside crown of a hat. A puggaree often has small claws at each end so that they can be removed and changed out at will.

• Ribbon- The decorative band around the outside of a hat. It can be Petersham or grosgrain ribbon. Sometimes in place of a ribbon there is a rope-like device (as in Tyrolean hats) of a cloth band like a puggaree. Sometimes it is a band made of the same material as the hat and these are called “same felt” or “self felted” ribbons.
• Silverbelly- This is a particular color of hat. It is usually made of the most delicate and finest belly fur of a beaver and is usually a whitish, gray color. Some assume Silverbelly is undeyed fur, but I don’t think that was ever true. 100% beaver can still be dyed any color, so it is more likely that “silverbelly” refers to the color itself more than it does the type of fur.
• Snap Brim- This is a brim that is dished upwards from the factory, but can be “snapped” down just in front, or all the way around-–meaning the brim isn’t in a fixed state like that of a cowboy hat or a stiff hat. It is one of the main features of a fedora.
• Stampede String- A string pushed through holes on the sides of the brim that coumes down under the neck to hold the hat on the head while riding a horse or in high winds. There are seen on boonie hats and cowboy hats.
• Stingy Brim- A stingy is a brim is one under 2-3/8 inches. Shorter brims were popular in the 1800s to about 1920 and then again starting about 1958 or so.
• Sweatband- The sweatband is an ingenious invention, really. It is a simple strip of leather (in newer hats often a synthetic leather-like material) that helps keep your hat on your head. The leather helps stick to you skin better than a hat without a sweatband and therefore keeps the hat on your head better. It also tends to help keep the shape of the hat intact. In the old days a leather sweatband was a very fine leather treatment and a lot of attention was paid to it but as hats became more expensive to manufacture and became more mass produced the fanciness of the leather began to suffer. Sweatbands are sewn in in two ways: a reeded sweatband and an unreeded sweatband. Much more on sweatbands can be seen at my sweatband page.

• Sweat barrier- In the late 40s and early 50s the hat industry experimented with an oil skin or plastic barrier sewn into the leather sweatband situated between the hat body and the leather. This was meant to keep the wearer’s sweat form getting through the leather and into the felt. These barriers ended up being a bad idea because by trapping the sweat in place it often tended to hasten the deterioration of the stitching and leather both. The hat industry stopped using them well before 1960.
• Velour- A velour hat is a particularly fine surface treatment of a fur felt hat. It is expensive and hard to produce and for that reason wasn’t the most common surface treatment of a hat body. They also demanded higher prices. The Germans made some of the inset velours in the world for generations. It is pretty much a lost art these days.
• Wind or Trolly String- A string affixed to the hat crown that ends with a loop and a button device. This string and button device is meant to be looped around a shirt or coat button or through a button hole in a shirt or coat. The concept is that if the hat blows off the wearer’s head, the string will keep it with his person and prevent the hat from being blown down the street. When not in use the string and button can be pulled snug around the crown of the hat by the ribbon (see images below).

• Whippet- This is a particular model of hat made famous by Stetson. It generally has a 2-1/2 to 2-7/8 inch brim with a ribbon bound edge. It has a pinch front and a 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 inch ribbon. A Stetson Whippet is not aStetson Whippet unless it is marked “Whippet” on either the leather sweatband or the liner. Regardless, the style is one of the most classic fedora designs.
• Wool- This is not the best material to use to make a fedora. Wool does not hold its shape well over time and with wear and is considered a “cheap” material.
• XXX Beaver- This is a demarcation of quality. It usually refers to how much beaver fur is in the hat. This is a very involved term and I have written more about it on another one of my hat pages.

Panama and Straw Hat Terms

Straw hats are a whole world all by themselves and since they have been around for hundreds of years there are a multitude of materials and styles. But here are a few terms associated with the straw hat. There are many terms in straw hat making, but here are the most important:

• Baku- A straw made of Philippine fiber. Also once called Shantung.
• Hanoki- A lightweight hat made of Chinese wood fiber twisted into fine, rope-like strands, and woven.
• Hemp- A light and resilient plant fiber originating in Manila. It is machine-woven into open-weave bodies.
• Milan- A soft, golden straw found in China.
• Montecristi Panama- a straw from Ecuador that is usually of the highest (and most expensive) quality.True Montecristis can often cost thousands of dollars.
• Optimo Panama- This straw hat has a round crown with a ridge running from front to back. It is also sometimes called a “colonial straw”
• Panama straw- These are hats made of toquilla fiber, which is woven in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.
• Panapore straw- Usually a wider, less tight weave and a cheaper straw hat.
• Parasisal Straw- A high grade sisal straw used mainly for the best quality of hats.
• Paribuntal- From China, it is a Bakou straw in a wider, looser weave
• Shantung- Was originally the name for the Philippine Baku but now usually refers to either a paper straw or a plastic straw, not a natural fiber straw.
• Toyo Straw- This is a “straw” made of paper and invented in Japan.

Straw weave styles:
There are two basic weaves and both have “grades” to them with more weaves per inch. The tighter the weave the more time consuming to make the hat and, therefore, the more expensive.

• Cuenca- A weave that leaves a herringbone look.
• Brisa- A tighter weave than the Cuenca and indicative of a more expensive hat.

Here is an image showing two of the kinds of Panama hat weaves to show some differences in styles:

Hat Companies

Here is a list of some of the more common, larger hat companies from the late 1800s until most went defunct by the 1960s. There were literally thousands of smaller, local hat companies, but these were the larger, national brands.

American Brands:

• Adam
• Bailey
• Beaver Brand
• Bee
• Biskup
• Bollman (Still in business)
• Bond
• Cavanagh
• Champ
• Charlie 1 Horse (Still in business)
• Churchill
• Crouft & Knapp
• Dalton
• Davis
• Dayton
• Disney
• Dobbs (Still in business)
• Dunlap
• Embassy
• Hoyt
• Hudsonian
• Jay-Mor
• Knox (Still in business)
• Lee
• Lion
• Mallory
• Melton
• Morfelt
• Penn-Craft
• Penny Marathon
• Pilgrim
• Portis
• Resistol (Still in business)
• Schenley
• Schoble
• Stetson (Still in business)
• Wormser

Foreign Brands:

Australian

• Akubra (Still in business)

Canadian

• Biltmore (Still in business)

Czechoslovakian

• Tonak (Still in business)

English

• Christys’ (Still in business)
• G.A. Dunn & Co.
• Lock & Company (Still in business)

German

• Huckel
• Mayser (Still in business)
• Wegener (Still in business)

Italian

• Barbisio (Still in business)
• Barlesoni (Still in business)
• Borsolino (Still in business)
• Solferino

Stetson, The Making of a Legend: Westerns

(Notice that all that fluffy stuff floating around is the actual fur. You’ll note that the “skin” of the animal is NOT used for hats. Just the fluffy fur which is matted together to make the hat body.)

Stetson, The Making of a Legend: Dress Hats

Stetson, The Making of a Legend: Newsboy-Styled Caps

How Australia’s Famed Akubra Hats are Made

Well, this one is in German, but it still shows the process pretty well.

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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
––Samuel Johnson

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.

For a full bio, please