-By Warner Todd Huston
There are several things about the inside of a fedora that can help determine when it was made. For instance, leather sweatbands, that strap of leather inside a hat just where the forehead sits — meant to help keep a hat on the wearer’s head — can often be used to help date an earlier fedora because after the 1940s, sweatbands went through some radical changes all due to hat makers getting cheap on this generally unseen part of the hat.
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.
A Glossary of Hat Terms, Words, Definitions, And Styles
All the hat terms you need to know to understand the world of hats and hat wearing.
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.
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.
And now on with Observations on Fedora Sweatbands, Size Tags, and Fedora Dating Tips…
Before I get further into the topic of this treatise, I’d like to throw in one other little dating tip. Clear plastic crown liners are a sure fire way of at least determining in what era the hat might have been made–or at least when it could not have been made. You see, many hats have silk-like liners inside and early in the 1950’s (like ’52 or so) the hat industry started adding clear plastic to the very top of the liner where the pate of the head would sit inside the hat. The idea was to keep the company’s logo printed there to remain in a nice, viewable condition and to prevent all the hair goop that men wore at the time from damaging the hat manufacturer’s brand name stamp.
This clear plastic liner was all the rage for hat makers for at least a decade but started to go out of fashion by the 1970s. Cost of adding the clear plastic to the liner was one reason it became less common (though you’ll still see it today here and there), but also men stopped using as much hair goop as they did in the 50s and early 60s as hair styles evolved to that light-breezy look and away from the greased down, hair goop look.
Previous to 1950 the hat industry used a sort of oil-skin material that was translucent, but not clear, to serve this protective purpose. So if your hat has this yellowish sort of protective layer it was made between 1940 and 1950 in general terms.
You can see some images of these liners at the end of this article.
Now, on to sweatbands…
Previous to the 40s, hatmakers often put quite a lot of art into their leather sweatbands. But as mechanized mass production grew and the old artisan hatmakers died off, this part of the hat began to gain a more utilitarian look. By the 1960s and the death of the fedora as a part of a man’s everyday wardrobe, the sweatband fully lost its artistic appearance and became merely a band of stiff leather or worse a piece of synthetic whatyacallit that simply performed the mere purpose that a sweatband performs. The craft was gone.
But between the 1890s and 1940 there are quite a few things that mark the work of leather sweatbands. If you are unsure of how old your hat is, these features can help date your fedora.
The following are some general rules that mark pre 1940s era sweatbands on American hats (Foreign-made hats are a different animal in many ways). Remembering that hats were quite often used up and thrown away, hats made before 1940s are far more scarce than later pieces, so if any or all of the features described here are present on your hat, you just might have a pretty old and more valuable hat on your hands.
Now, before I get to the observations, be warned that these are general rules. Hats were made by millions of people across the world, worn by millions more, and sold in the millions over the era that we are talking about here. So, you can be sure to find a hat made in our era of consideration that does not perfectly fit these criteria. Any sort of configuration can be found, for sure.
Again, remember, these are general thoughts meant only to act as a starting point to help identify the age of a fedora. There are many other things that you need to take into account as you date your hat. Things such as ribbon and bow style, liner type, and the logos of the hat companies imprinted thereupon–as companies changed their logos as the decades moved onward–all these things must be taken together with these thoughts on sweatbands to help date your hat.
So, without further ado, here are some general ideas on sweatbands.
Leather Quality
One of the things that happened to the hat industry is that as production costs rose, hat prices didn’t rise nearly so much. By the 1940s a nice, everyday hat cost a customer between seven and twelve dollars (real cheapos though, could be from $2.50 to $7). This price stayed a general ballpark figure all the way until the 1960s. That’s quite a long time to keep a common item that customers bought everyday at the same price. So, since prices weren’t going up and up and up after the 40s, hatmakers began to cut costs in the production process and leather sweatbands became one of the causalities of that cost cutting. The fancier sweatband also became a victim of faster production methods. All the fancy finishing of the leather was just too time consuming for a bottom line manufacturing process.
But the good news for those wanting to date an older fedora is that all this cost cutting means that prior to 1940 sweatbands were usually manufactured as a fine leather product whereas their 40s and later counterparts were far simpler. This helps us date a hat.
One general rule is that previous to 1940 the outer, finished or tanned sides (the visible side) of a fedora sweatband was often very nicely textured in some way. Whether a wave was imprinted, or a pebbly appearance was impressed into the leather, a series of lines, or some other pattern was added, the leather was usually very nicely finished.
After the 30s and certainly by the 40s leather sweats were simply finished with a smooth finish lacking any fancy applied texturing. The fine look of the leather was dropped by hatmakers after the 40s because the cost of that flourish became undesirable.
Leather sweats previous to 1940 were also often thinner and finer leathers than that used in later eras. Sometimes sweats were even kidskin leather which was even more expensive to produce than the regular leather sweat. As the decades moved forward after 1940, leather got thicker and stiff and by 1960 turned into synthetic materials and not leather at all.
Be warned, tough, as you handle a leather sweatband. At this late date, that thinner, finer leather of the older hats often means that it is very delicate due to age.
A pebbled appearance imprinted into this 1920s era Stetson “The Fray” fedora
A fine dot pattern is imprinted into this 1920s era Stetson derby
A sort of “leather look” pattern is imprinted into this 1920s era Stetson long hair fedora
A wave pattern is imprinted into this 1920s era Stetson Select Quality fedora
Leather Color
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about leather sweatbands it is that they were finished in every shade of brown you can think of. Sometimes antique fedoras, top hats, derbies, and the like also featured cloth sweatbands. Sometimes sweatbands were colored an odd gray color. Sometimes they were sort of like oil cloth, treated with a painted finish. But, for some reason I have never understood, leather sweatbands were almost never made of black between the 1890s and the 1960s.
I have no explanation for why this is so, but you’ll rarely see a hat made before 1960 that features a black leather sweatband. So, if your hat has a black leather sweatband, you can almost be deadlock sure it is from the 1960s and later, not previous. (Note, men’s hats previous to the 1880s or 90s did use black leather for sweatbands, but hats that old are far and few between. As we are concerned, a “fedora” didn’t really exist before the 1890s or so.)
Filigree
Another aspect of older sweats is what, for a lack of a better term, I am going to call a “filigree.” This “filigree” is some sort of flourish near the edge of the sweat, the edge opposite of where the leather is sewn to the hat. This flourish often takes the shape of single line, a pair of lines, or some thin pattern deeply impressed into the leather running parallel to the edge of the sweat.
This was simply there to add flourish and make the leather look fancier or professional.
This filigree was carried forward into later eras of hatmaking, but often they went from being deeply impressed into the leather to a but lightly impressed. Later, because of more of those cost cutting measures, the filigree devolved to ink printed lines (often in gold) and wasn’t imprinted into the leather at all.
Early 1930s Embassy Hats
1920s era Hudson Straw Boater
Cotton Tape Slotting
Another thing that marked a fine hat was a sort of decorative cotton tape slotting. This slotting usually took up the back third of the sweatband. By slotting, I mean that little slots of leather were stamped out and a 1/8 inch or smaller cotton twill tape was interwoven through the slots giving the hat’s sweatband a fancier look.
This was not usually on the cheaper hats, though. Stetson, for instance, kept this practice up even until the 1960s in its more expensive fedoras and westerns. Very often you’ll find a 1950s era Stetson Twentyfive or a Stetson 100 with this feature.
I am pretty sure that this decorative flourish is a hold over from the days when sweatbands often had a drawstring laced into them. This drawstring was used to help size the hat to the wearer’s head. Earlier hats, you see, weren’t necessarily manufactured on the settled hat sizing systems that hatmakers began to use in the 1880s and later.
The decorative cotton tape on a 1920s era Solferino long hair fedora
Leather Sweats from 1960 on
One of the biggest areas of cost cutting for the hat industry was in sweatband quality. As you see above the very old hats from the 1880s to about 1940 were often pretty fancy. But by 1960 hat makers went very cheap on their leather — and often even used synthetic, fake leather. Here is an example of what a leather sweatband looked like in a Stetson from 1960 on…
The photo above shows a Stetson from the 1980s, but they began looking like this starting in the 60s. Notice the leather is smooth, with no impression, pebbling, or textures into the leather? Also the lettering for the manufacturer and store names were just printed over the top of the leather instead of embossed meaning that the lettering often rubbed away easily with sweat and use. Also, the filagree at the edge is just a gold line printed on the leather instead of any embossing or imprinting. It also was easy to rub off with sweat and use. As you can see, the leather because a cheap, utilitarian thing instead of a mark of quality.
Maker Imprints
It began to become standard practice in the late 1800s for hat makers to impress their company name and logo into their leather sweatbands in order to tell customers who made the hat. Along with this imprint into the leather, hatmakers also began to emplace specially screen printed, satin or satin-like, polished cotton liners into hats with their logos. This all in an effort to brand their products.It’s all about marketing, of course.
The growth of what today we call marketing wasn’t just happening in hatmaking, granted. It was a phenomenon that was occurring throughout America’s business sector. Companies were beginning to understand that a compony brand name was quite important in selling products.
Be it Stetson’s brand, Mallory’s, Dobbs, or any of dozens if not hundreds of others, hatmakers began stamping their logos into their sweatbands in the two decades before 1900s began. You’d have to do a bit of patent research to find out which logos were introduced when, but these logos are a way to date a hat.
It wasn’t long before the retail stores also began imprinting their own names and logos into the hat. So you may see your hat carrying a retailer’s and a hatmaker’s mark impressed into the leather.
Another aspect of a pre-40s sweat is often the complexity of the imprint. As years moved onward, imprint dies that hatmakers used became simplified and less fancy looking. Also remember that graphic design changed over the years and the more Victorian looking, complex imprints of earlier days started to go away to be replaced sometimes by art deco look for a short time in the late 20s and 30s and then just a cleaner, simpler look afterward.
Additionally, these imprints were often very deeply imprinted into the leather, the images sharp and clear. And if the imprint was embellished with black or gold ink that ink was also sharp, clear, and finely wrought. Hallmarks of later logo imprints were less sharply delineated imprints and, again, by the 60s it was no longer imprinted at all but just printed in black or gold ink onto the surface of the leather.
The logo imprint on a 1920s era Stetson Select Quality
The logo imprint on a 1920s era Stetson No 1 Quality Western
The company that retailed this 1920s Stetson was named McCarthy The Hatter of LaFayette, Indiana
The Sewing Attaching Sweat to Hat
The way a leather sweat was attached to a hat is also sometimes a way to help date it.
For instance, previous to the more mechanized hat factories of the late 1800s and later, sweatbands were often just sewn right to a hat directly. But as new manufacturing processes began to take hold, a new way of attaching the sweat to the hat began to become more commonplace. By the mid to late 20s the latter style became the most common way to attach a sweat to a hat body than the former.
That later method was called “reeding.” This was a thin, natural reed circling the sweatband and covered in cloth. It is seen between the leather and the hat body. This reeding helped make a sturdier attachment. The reed was often connected to itself in the back of the hat with a bit of brass. Over time, this brass often degrades into verdigris and stains the hat a green color right at the back where the sweatband meets itself. The natural reed was soon replaced with a wire reed and still later with a plastic reed.
Still, it depended on the hat maker. By the dawn of 1920, some hat makers switched totally to reeded sweatbands on all hat models, some used the reeded sweatband on only some models and sewed the sweatband directly to the hat for others (like pocket hats or crushables), and yet other hat makers never adopted the reeding system at all.
Another hallmark of pre 1930 hats was the stitch configuration. Very often (but not exclusively) a sweatband was sewn to the hat (whether reeded or not) with a stitch that forms a “V.” Sort of like this: vvvvvvvv
By the 30s and later sweats are more commonly sewn to the hat with an up-and-down stitch. Like this: IIIIIIIII
The above two notes are most especially true with Stetsons, but, again, these are general rules for the hat industry. There are exceptions.
A Stetson western from the 1920s or previous with the vvvvv stitching
A Stetson western from the 1930s with the IIIII stitching
An example of verdigris
Sweatband Ends
The next telltale is how the ends of your sweatband are fixed together. In our day, sweatbands are usually sewn together with a stitch that runs all up and down the ends. But previous to the 1930s, the ends of sweats were not sewn together up and down. Perhaps there was a loop or two at just the very end of the sweatband to keep the ends from flaring, but more often there were completely un-sewn.
Previous to the 30s one of the ways that hatmakers kept the ends from flaring out and looking untidy was to use a strip of heavy paper tape behind the ends. This tape had a heavy glue on it that kept the sweatband ends together.
The little bow that we often see at the back of a hat is also one of the methods used to keep the ends from flaring. Later this tiny bow became merely decorative or was used to hide the stitching of a size tag sewn into the sweatband.
A Stetson 3X western from the 1920s or previous with the sweatband ends unsewn
A Stetson fedora from the 1920s with the sweatband ends unsewn
A Stetson strawboater from the 1930s with the sweatband ends sewn together
A Stetson Boss Raw Edge Western from the 1930s with the sweatband ends sewn together
So, there you have it. Some general ideas on how leather sweatbands were made in the era between 1890 and 1940. These telltale signs might help you date your hat. Good hat wearing and good hat hunting.
Size Tag Dating
Finally, the last thing that might help date your hat is how the size was marked. Between the 1890s and 1930, for instance, the usual way that a mass produced hat was marked for size was a tiny round sticker with the size printed on it was glued directly to the sweatband at the back of the hat. Sometimes this sticker was diamond shaped or square, or even a little scalloped shape, but most often it was just round. These were glued either to the sweatband itself (usually in the middle of the band) or even glued to the felt of the hat above the sweatband — the latter usually only when a hat was produced with no liner.
This changed sometime in the late 20s or early 30s. By that time the size tag became an actual tag sticking down from the back of the hat where the sweatband meets. Sometimes glued in, more often sewn through the cardboard and into the sweat band.
Sometimes this size tag was a little piece of cloth, too. These tags could also be offset from the sweatband ends an inch or so right or left from where the sweatband meets, sticking down out from the leather.
One other thing on size tags. If your size tag is a sort of rectangular thing with black words printed on gold paper, it is likely a hat made well after 1940 (and more likely in the 1960s and later). Also, if it is an American hat with a metric size number on it, it was probably made after 1970. And if it says “small,” or “medium,” or “large” it was made in the last 30 years or so… and no true, well-made, vintage fedora will be sized as small, medium, or large in the first place.
A 1920s era Schenley Homburg showing older size sticker style
A cloth size tag on a Mallory fedora from the 1940s
Stetson Size Tags
Stetson had a series of different size tags and each appeared in different eras.
Like all hat makers, Stetson’s first size tag was a small, round sticker glued to the sweatband. This one lasted from the 1890s to the mid or late 1910s.
Soon Stetson switched to a rounded paper tag (sometimes called the “keyhole” tag) with gold ink and black ink printed on manila card stock. This lasted from about the 1920s to the 30s.
By the 1930s, Stetson went with a manila card stock with only black ink printed on it. This one lasted until 1960.
By 1960, Stetson went with a squared off tag printed in black.
Some time after Stetson was sold off to the Stevens Hat Co. in 1971, the company began to put the European size on the tag along with the U.S. size system.
Stetson Size Tag Variations
There were also a few variations of Stetson’s size tags over the years. These tags were a bit less common than those above.
Here is another size tag that Stetson used during the early 1900s. But this one is rarely seen.
Early in the 30s, Stetson had a tag that was embossed and featured gold foil and black ink.
Some Canadian manufactured Stetsons were also printed on gold foil. This one from the 1950s.
In the 1950s, Stetson used a tag printed in red and gold on a manila card stock for its straw “Saddle Roll” hats.
In the 1950s, Stetson also had a size tag that incorporated a die cut price tag. The buyer was supposed to tear off the price tag and leave the size tag standing.
Before it switched to the squared off tag in the early 60s, Stetson also used this all black keyhole tag.
Once in a while, Stetson also used this gold tag in the post 70s era..
Other Tags of Interest
Union Labels
Another way to get some general idea on a manufacture date for a hat is to find the union label glued inside the hat. These labels are either glued to the inside of the felt behind the inner sweatband or glued to the back side of the sweatband itself. Sometimes the union label is a drop down tag sewn to the hat somewhere, too. Union labels, though, can only give the most general idea on dating based on when the unions were active.
The earliest hatters union was the National Trade Association of Hat Finishers of the United States of America. This union was formed in 1854 and went defunct in 1896. I have yet to find an example of this union’s official label. If I ever find it, I’ll update this page with the image.
The National Silk and Fur Hat Finishers Association, U.S.A. existed from 1868 to 1896 when it merged with United Hatters of North America.
The United Hatters of North America claimed direct lineage back to 1854 with the earlier two groups and carried on until 1934 when it merged with the United Hatters Cap and Millinery Workers.
The United Hatters Cap and Millinery Workers International Union began in 1934 and went on until at least the 1990s.
Another label that sometimes is seen in hats is the label of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers union. This one was founded 1976 after a merger with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Textile Workers Union of America. It folded in 1995 after a merger with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.
Three Very Special Labels
There are three very specific tags that give us a span of only a few years to date the manufacture of a hat.
On this Embassy Hat Company hat is a New Deal, NRA inspection tag. Date of Manufacture: Between 1931 and 1935. This was one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s many nanny-state, buttinski-like manufacturing regulatory boards. Happily, the Supreme Court canceled many of these useless, expensive boards that did nothing to help America get out of The Great Depression.
And here is yet another Roosevelt, regulatory tag. This one is from the Office of Price Administration (O.P.A.) which during WWII set the ceiling price for items to prevent “price gouging” (something that real capitalism eliminates, anyway–not that FDR knew a damn thing about capitalism!). This agency existed from 1941 to 1947. The above two tags are not seen a whole heck of a lot. Often they were ripped out of hats and don’t survive to this day.
For the third tag, on this Stetson 100 you can see an Office of Price Stabilization tag (O.P.S.). Date of Manufacture: Between 1951 and 1953. Once the Korean War came and the U.S. jumped into it, the federal government again imposed a series of price fixing policies upon the manufacturing sector. Thankfully, the O.P.S. lasted for only a few short years. Strangely, these tags seem to have made it to our era more often than the two above.
Stetson also had a variation of the O.P.S. tag. It was a punch out that surrounded the size tag as seen below on this 1950s Stetson Milan straw.
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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
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, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.