Before World War II, hats were an essential part of western fashion for both women and men. There are lots of theories about why people stopped wearing hats — many blame the enclosed automobile for making hats unnecessary. Others say men didn’t want to wear hats after they were required to in the war. There are those who think John F. Kennedy not wearing a previously obligatory top hat to his inauguration in 1960 was the death knell for men’s hats. All of these may be true, but the point is that until the 1940s, people wore hats on an everyday basis. So when historical costume movies and TV shows are set before World War II, they better have hats!
And yet, hat-wearing in frock flicks can be spotty at best. Recent productions want to be “relatable” and since hardly anyone wears hats today, how could viewers possibly relate to historical characters wearing hats? UGH. Even when hats are used in a historical movie or TV show, they may bear little resemblance to what was worn in the specified historical period. So in preparation for our next Snark Week, I thought it’d be a good idea to take a look at some of the hats that should be worn in various time periods — and see if any frock flicks get it right! Then, during Snark Week, I’ll share a collection of the ones that get it oh-so-very wrong.
Hats haven’t always been forgotten onscreen. Costume designers know that hats can be an essential part of a character. In a Classic Couple interview, Deborah Nadoolman Landis (who gave Indy his trademark hat in Raiders of the Lost Ark) said:
“What makes an iconic look for a character for male? It’s helpful to have a hat. It was helpful for Dick Tracy. It’s helpful for all of the superheroes to have headgear and hats. I think Charlie Chaplin and I think of the hat. Hats are incredibly important.”
Even when designing for a modern flick before she created the bustled looks for The Gilded Age, Kasia Walicka-Maimone knew the importance of hats. She told LA Times about her careful hat designs for The Adjustment Bureau (2011):
“We spent a lot of time fitting the appropriate hat to each character — we saw it as the final gesture in a man’s outfit. Each of the gentlemen: Matt Damon, Terence Stamp, Anthony Mackie and John Slattery –- wore their hat completely differently -– and each one had a different personality that demanded a different hat.”
Going back to the 1960s, Theadora Van Runkle‘s historical costume designs for Bonnie and Clyde (1967) crossed over into modern fashion. She explained to Vogue magazine:
“The beret was the culmination of the silhouette. In it, she combined all the visual elements of elegance and chic. Without the beret, it would have been charming, but not the same.”
That 1930s-style beret launched a fashion trend. Reportedly, after the film came out, beret production jumped from 5,000 to 12,000 berets a week at one manufacturer.
Sometimes we’ve heard about directors or show-runners disliking hats in their productions these days, but not so James Cameron, at least for Titanic (1997). In CR Fashionbook, costume designer Deborah Lynn Scott talks about the boarding costume in the movie:
“The hat was interesting, because Jim was very adamant about the hat being as big as possible because that was of the period. It was a very big symbol of wealth, and so we basically made the hat as big as I could make it and not have it look ridiculous. [Jim] did a brilliant reveal where [Winslet] tipped her head down, tipped her head back, and you slowly see her face. The shot starts on her feet and it goes up her entire body and it’s a real showcase for the suit.”
Compare with the bonnet-hating crowd that’s making frock flicks right now, and especially making Regency and other 19th-century period productions where bonnets would be de rigueur. Director William Oldroyd proclaimed of his drama set in 1865, Lady Macbeth (2016), “We wanted to make an anti-bonnet period drama.” Then there’s Bridgerton show-runner Chris Van Dusen who wanted the series’ 1810s fashion to be “aspirational” thus, he pointed out to the Hollywood Reporter: “You’ll notice Bridgerton is a bonnet-free world.”
But this wasn’t the first time headgear took a hit. The Guardian proclaimed “The death of the bonnet” at the BBC in 2009 after a new head of drama commissioning came along. A BBC insider told the news outlet:
“There is to be an evolution in the presentation of period dramas, moving away from classic 19th century so-called ‘bonnet’ dramas to looking at other periods of history.”
Which, sure, that’s great! There’s a ton of historical stories that haven’t made it onscreen yet (and we’re no fans of bonnets per se). But somewhere along the line, when some tired Victorian tales were supposedly ditched, it seems like all headgear was thrown out too.
Well, I’m here to remind folks that hats aren’t just for losers! Bonnets don’t have to be derpy, and not all headgear is bonnety in the least. Hats are wonderful, wacky, creative, and cool. There are lots of different types of hats worn during any one time period depending on a person’s gender, age, wealth, status, and specific geographical region. But there are often general types of hats that can work to give a general look for a period, and that’s better, IMO, than no hat at all.
So let’s take a broad walk through history and look at some movies and TV shows that get historical hats right. Fair warning that I’ll tend to focus a lot on 16th and 18th centuries because the former is my specialty and the later is Kendra’s, but I’ll try to give a general overview of other times.
Medieval Women’s Headgear in Movies & TV
The basics here should include a wimple but can get quite elaborate. There’s a lot of fairy-tale fantasy headgear in supposedly medieval movies, but these don’t stray terribly far from what historical evidence exists.
Compare the tomb effigy with this:
Another style seen is this barbette and fillet arrangement, yes, with the hair loose.
Reproduced nicely here:
Then there’s the hennin, everyone’s favorite because it’s so dramatic. Instead of making it a fantasy Sleeping Beauty thing, it should look more like this arrangement of veils:
I think these are pretty darn good versions, but I’m sure some movie/TV producers prefer the cone-on-head style for the weird drama.
A brief digression into shaved/plucked foreheads of medieval women. That goes with the hat and veil.
Yep, it can be done onscreen and looks great!
Now, for more of that tall hennin look, it’s really less about the cone and more about the veils:
While there are tons more styles of headgear worn by women through the middle ages, one that shows up a lot onscreen looks essentially like a padded roll of fabric. The seeming simplicity makes it popular with SCA folk as well as theatrical productions. I’m dubious about how much it really was worn because I can’t find many images (especially compared to wimples or even hennins). This is the clearest I’ve got:
What movies tend to do is this:
Which isn’t terrible since she’s wearing it over some kind of hair net and with a veil, so it seems plausible (more so than her makeup, lol).
Medieval Men’s Chaperons in Movies & TV
Yes, more styles of men’s headgear existed before the 16th century than this one hat, but this is what I can find well represented in frock flicks. And surprisingly very well represented.
From low-budget comedy capers…
To inspirational biopics…
To Shakespearean romance…
To cheesy horror…
To an obscure early Colin Firth flick…
Early 16th-Century Italian Women’s Balzos in Movies & TV
Here’s one of history’s weirder hats that gets misused a lot on film. It was worn for a few decades in the Italian peninsula, but I’ve seen it turn up in a lot of random places. While the Shakespeare story isn’t set in a specific year, the overall costume look is very 1530s, so the balzo fits nicely here.
Early 16th-Century Men’s Hats in Movies & TV
A couple standard hats will work for big chunks of the 16th century for men’s costume. The first one is this upturned beret, and most depictions of Henry VIII get that much right.
Undecorated versions of this hat style can also been seen on figures like Thomas Moore and Thomas Cromwell in the same period.
16th-Century Women’s Hoods in Movies & TV
I’ve spent many years obsessing over the styles and construction of 16th-century women’s hats, so yeah, I’m very particular about them onscreen! The most commonly worn headgear among middling to upper-class women throughout the whole century in England and France was the hood, aka the French hood. I wrote a whole article about this already, so go read that. I’m just summarizing here with a few more examples.
Literally at the very end of the second season, the otherwise shitty Spanish Princess managed to get in a few decent hoods!
The style of hoods gained more structure over time, becoming what’s been called an English or gable hood.
This version was worn for a couple of decades and could be relatively simple or very elaborate:
Then there’s the French hood, supposedly brought to England by Anne Boleyn.
While we often deride sticky-uppy French hoods and other problems, they’re not all bad onscreen.
And because they were worn in France:
16th-Century Women’s Caps in Movies & TV
Let’s take a detour from women’s hats to caps — soft head coverings that were worn by women of all classes in society throughout the 16th century. They’re often worn indoors by the upper classes or outdoors with or without other headgear by lower classes. Note that they’re NOT unfortunate biggins because they’re either shaped (so they aren’t just a coif) or they’re worn under another hat.
We really love these caps as shown on gentry women in Wolf Hall!
Caps had lots of shape variations and could also be worn with a forehead cloth tied on.
While the construction onscreen isn’t always historically accurate, the effect is close.
Then there’s the coif itself, and many gorgeously embroidered ones dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries can be found in museums today.
While few productions recreate the embroidery precisely (it’s time consuming and thus expensive), some try to get the effect. Elizabeth R shows a faux blackworked coif worn to bed under a lace-trimmed head rail, which is how Queen Elizabeth would have done it.
Then there’s that “Mary Stuart” cap, sometimes called an attifet. It’s a soft cap that was starched and possibly wired to create the famous heart shape that framed the face. As I’ve said before, Mary Queen of Scots didn’t invent this hat, nor was the style unique to her — it was just a type of structured cap with veiling commonly worn by widowed and older French women in the period. There are lots of variations on this type of headgear in other regions as well.
There’s a lot of terrible versions of this hat on film and TV, on a lot of figures, but I don’t hate this:
And for a nice, more literal reproduction, look again to Elizabeth R…
Catherine de’ Medici is often portrayed wearing a form of this cap, since she was painted wearing it. Here are the rare ones that have a decent onscreen look, IMO, because they’re made of delicate sheer materials and not some hard, structured Mickey Mouse ears thing:
Later 16th-Century Men’s Flat Caps in Movies & TV
The men’s beret evolved into a soft cap with a narrow brim over the 16th century. Wealthy men wore them in velvet decked with jewels and feathers, while lower-class men wore them in plain wool. Women also wore this style, though less commonly than hoods.
Later 16th-Century Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
Another hat style women wore during this century was a version of the men’s flat cap that could be just as flat or puffed up, depending on how it was constructed. It’s not as common as other styles (like the French hood, which was commonly worn right up through the 1590s), and it’s easy to make the tall version of this hat inaccurately where it ends up looking like a Victorian riding hat. Key is that it should be a soft hat and not terribly tall, even if puffed up. Women did wear tall hats at the very end of the 16th century, but they had wide brims and were made of hard structured material (think of the “puritan” or “witch” hats).
Movies and TV shows love to put this hat at a jaunty angle, but historical portraits I’ve seen show it sitting straight atop the woman’s head.
There aren’t a ton of period images of the more puffed-up style. But movies and TV shows love it!
Mostly at that jaunty angle…
Later 16th-Century Men’s Tall Hats in Movies & TV
A style that seems to have become popular in Spain and then moved across the continent and to England is the tall crowned hat. This structured hat was first worn by men and had a very narrow brim. That brim got wider and wider, and by the last decade of the 16th century, very wide-brimmed hats were fashionable among men and women. The next century would see huge wide-brimmed hats.
I love how that super narrow-brim style is so well recreated here!
But this more moderate shape is relatively common onscreen.
17th-Century Men’s Hats in Movies & TV
The 17th century doesn’t get a lot of love onscreen except for The Three Musketeers, and when you have musketeers, ya gotta have their giant hats. It’s the law!
The best version is, of course, the 1973 one.
As the century wore on, hats were still big and very important. There were subtle changes, and you can see the folded-up side that will turn into tricorns and bicorns around the turn of this century.
17th-Century Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
I don’t find that there’s a particularly iconic hat style for women in this century. A lot of the late 16th-c. styles carried over to the first part of the 17th. But because this period isn’t shown a lot onscreen, the hats aren’t either. When it comes to women, filmmakers focus on the period’s hairstyles. Occasionally, we see some of the similar wide-brimmed hats like the men’s that women also wore.
Here’s that structured tall hat (aka “puritan” hat).
And here’s one more like the men’s wide-brimmed hat with a lower crown.
17th-Century Women’s Caps in Movies & TV
These caps are basically the same as in the 16th century, but they just aren’t seen onscreen. So if I spot ’em, I’m very happy.
Like when I’m watching a creepy frock flick, and I’m totally distracted by the headgear.
They could also be worn with fancy garb.
17th-Century Women’s Fontanges in Movies & TV
At the very end of this century and the start of the next, upper-class women wore these tall, wired lace caps with long tails known as fontanges. They supposedly have a French origin but were very popular at the English court.
The few times they show up onscreen, fontanges can be exaggerated or made in colors or trim to stand out even more. But I give ’em props for making a solid effort.
This miniseries about the 1st Duke and Duchess of Marlborough has a bunch of fontanges, and while I can only find tiny, rather crappy screencaps of the costumes, it looks like the old Beeb did a good job.
Costume designer Sandy Powell did highly stylized costumes for this Queen Anne film, but her costumes were based in historical designs.
18th-Century Women’s Broad Hats in Movies & TV
A popular hat worn by women in the 18th century is a broad, round, very flat hat. The crown is rather low, but it’s not entirely flat. This hat is typically tied or pinned behind the woman’s head.
These hats sometimes flip up in the back.
You can see trim around the crown and maybe a tiny bit of trim on the brim edge.
18th-Century Women’s Wired Hats in Movies & TV
The same style of broad, flat hat could also be made from fabric stretched over a wired frame for a more delicate look.
Sometimes with lace.
Definitely with ribbon trims.
18th-Century Women’s Caps on Servants in Movies & TV
Caps evolved from the 16th/17th-century style to a bigger shape that accommodated larger hairstyles in the 18th century. The styles of decoration also changed to become more ruffled and sometimes with ribbon. This can even be seen on servants and other working women. The cliched “mob cap” is not really a thing — these caps have shape and are made of multiple pieces (no elastic!), creating a tidy overall look.
Note the band around the head and the ruffled front edge.
18th-Century Upper-Class Women’s Caps in Movies & TV
Not just working women wore caps! Upper-class women wore similar caps indoors and under outdoor hats. Their caps were made of more luxurious materials, of course, and in even smaller and more delicate shapes.
Compare with:
18th-Century Women’s Extra Fancy Caps in Movies & TV
And then caps just went cray-cray! They got huge and totally ridiculous — almost a mockery of the practical servant girl’s cap, now made in the most delicate sheer voile and dripping with lace and ribbon. Yep, that’s fashion for ya.
A few versions seen from the side:
Another cap style that’s a little confection of sheer fabric atop big hair:
On the Queen:
More confectionary caps:
But the caps could be even bigger!
These caps aren’t just for suckers!
18th-Century Men’s Tricorns in Movies & TV
Fellas had it easier in this century. They mostly wore tricorns the whole time. The size varied a little bit, as did trims. But a tricorn works for lower or upper class from start to finish.
When men wore big, fancy wigs, they still had hats, they just carried them.
18th-Century Women’s Tricorns in Movies & TV
Women also wore tricorns in the 18th century, but not as often as movies and TV shows would have you think. Primarily, they were worn by women as part of riding outfits and traveling outfits. There’s a few period images of women wearing tricorns with masquerade or carnival outfits too. But it wasn’t a super frequently worn hat (no matter how cute it is!).
This works because it’s a military-inspired riding outfit:
And these are traveling outfits:
Later 18th-Century Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
More commonly seen in period fashion plates than tricorns are all kinds of wild and wacky big hats with tons of trim! So many variations, though not enough have made it to the screen.
There’s one on Marie Antoinette, the princess royal, and background ladies.
On an extra:
And compare this painting:
With this:
And this fashion plate:
With these:
Maybe something wacky like:
Recreated as:
How about something covered in feathers, like this?
As recreated here:
Early 19th-Century Women’s Bonnets & Hats in Movies & TV
OK, here comes bonnet-ville! First up, small round bonnets that even me, a die-hard bonnet hater, has to admit are rather pretty.
Even better than a bonnet is a toque or other tall, shaped hats. The Regency era was filled with hat shapes and styles!
The bonnets do start to get big, but a costume designer can use that on film to their advantage.
19th-Century Men’s Hats in Movies & TV
From this point on, men start wearing the top hat a lot. There can be slight variations in crown height, brim width, color, and materials, but a black top hat is basic.
One place where men’s hats find some variety is lower- and working-class men. Bowler hats and a variety of soft caps were worn, which is something a good crowd scene can display.
Mid 19th-Century Women’s Bonnets & Hats in Movies & TV
From the 1830s through the 1860s, the bonnet reigns supreme. This is the most commonly worn headgear for women of all ages and social strata. Bonnets could be fancy or plain, big or small, and made out of a wide variety of materials. The fashionable shape and trims changed, but bonnets ruled for a generation.
Bonnets could be made of delicate materials that frame the face…
Or the exaggerated size and over-the-top trims could emphasize character differences, as Tom Pye discussed for this series.
Bonnets always look prettier with a veil, IMO.
Or if you’re Isabelle Huppert…
OK, here comes peak Death of Fashion time, but bonnets don’t have to hide the face.
However, even during the bonnet’s dominance, women had alternatives. Fashion plates do show other available hats, such as small crowned hats and Glengarry caps (which were like peaked pillboxes).
Her hat shape is OK, though more trim would make it look a bit more of the period.
A Glengarry cap suits Jo’s un-frilly nature.
This character gets a similar cap since she’s a sporty flying gal.
While Anna is a frilly type with a fussy hat, it’s still more of a head-topping confection instead of a face-hiding bonnet.
19th-Century Early Bustle-Era Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
Once we get past those 30 years of bonnets, women have a wider variety of hats again. Bonnets are still worn, but they’re much smaller in size and not the only popular option. The bustle fashions of the 1870s provide lots of headgear to coordinate.
This series has tons of hats, and most are in this little brimmed style that can be decorated a zillion ways.
Even more varieties of little hats perched atop elaborate hairstyles:
19th-Century Later Bustle-Era Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
The second bustle period of the 1880s branched out into more hat styles, often getting taller.
I know folks complained about the costuming in Gilded Age, but there were some excellent hats. These look right out of fashion plates.
19th-Century Bustle-Era Women’s Flower Pot Hats in Movies & TV
One specific style is what a lot of folks call “flower pot” hats because they look like flower pots turned upside down. They seem to be a favorite onscreen.
Maybe because it’s an easy hat to create and decorate, and it just looks damn good on everyone!
Even an otherwise shitty movie got some good hats.
Can’t tell if this is a true flower-pot or a mini-bowler, but it’s close enough.
A low flower-pot with lovely trims.
Early 20th-Century Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
Let’s jump to the next century, where hats started out HUGE as the overall dress silhouette got slimmer. I love how we can see in photos that even very young ladies wore fashionable hats.
Compare with:
Such pretty hats in this era and so much variety.
Big hats, big feathers, big bows.
It’s not just the main characters — the wedding crowd extras have great hats too!
Moar hat please!
I like big hats and I cannot lie.
The crowd is well hatted, but Rose stands out with the biggest hat of them all.
Large hats were worn by many fashionable ladies.
Even when ladies were crusading for equal rights.
1920s Women’s Hats in Movies & TV
Let’s finish this off with the ’20s, the last era when hats were really a key part of a woman’s wardrobe. While we associate the tight-fitting cloche with the decade, wide-brimmed hats were also fashionable.
Some cloches did have a narrow brim, while other cloches had no brim at all.
In the 1930s and even through the 1950s, hats were still worn, especially by upper-class women, but the fashion had peaked in the ’20s and was on the decline. Hats became more of an item worn for specific times and places — to church with your Sunday best, to weddings, at Ascot, etc. Hats were less a part of everyday life for the average person. So I won’t nitpick frock flicks set in these later decades as harshly. Unless, y’know, I feel like it, because hats aren’t just for losers!
What do you think of this look through hat history onscreen?
Aage Thaarup, the UK-based Royal milliner, theorised that the decline in women’s hat wearing after WWII was because many young women grew up only wearing hats as part of an uniform, either for school or in the forces, and that because they hadn’t gotten to enjoy and understand the fun of hat wearing, they grew up to only see hats as an prescribed evil for specific events, but also as an unnecessary expense when a headscarf or hood was much more practical. He did launch a special line of hats called “Teen and Twenty” designed for younger women and to be more affordable, but it was not a commercial success. I just finally tracked one of them down last year for my collection (an adorable little white hat with a huge bunch of red cherries) that I would have featured in my book Fashion in the 1950s had I found it sooner.
I don’t think I heard the JFK top hat story, I always understood that it was more because he habitually never wore a hat and his friend John Cavanagh (the American hatter, not the UK couturier) reportedly told him that by being so stylish and glamorous and hatless, he was screwing up the hat business, and as a result, JFK began carrying around a Cavanagh hat although he rarely wore it, but there was no miraculous revival of hatter fortunes.
I’d only heard the WWII ‘no hats’ excuse in relation to men, but it seems just as likely for women. Women still kept wearing hats a little bit longer into the 1950s for fashion, esp. in the U.S., but the ’60s killed hats as a common thing. The JFK inauguration story seems apocryphal, but yeah, in general, he wasn’t a hat guy!
The best recounting of the decline in the wearing of men’s hats in the US is the book, Hatless Jack by Neil Steinberg. Centered around the Kennedy story, it traces the decline of mens’ hat wearing beginning in the 1920s. The hatting industry was very well organized and by the mid-1930s their trade journal, Hat Life, was full of articles on this decline. For myself, I think the primary reason was the population shift from rural to urban, and that most urban work, (and commute), was done indoors. You can see the rapid decline from 1945 to 1960 in the number of hat stores in phone books and in the roof heights of cars.
Hard to say about the rural/urban shift, since that started in the 19th c., esp. in the UK & esp. for women, yet hats were still a big part of fashion for women & men until much later. But it’s likely that many things contributed over time.
I was so happy to see the drawings from (my mother’s book): “The Mode in Hats and Headresses” at the top of this post! That, and its companion book on costume, inspired my lifelong interest.
An excellent resource!
Thank you, Trystan! This might be my favorite Frockers’ deep-dive ever–and I don’t like wearing hats. (Best quote, too: “Bonnets always look prettier…if you’re Isabelle Huppert.” Her talents are many…) I don’t have time to say more, except that now I must watch “Jefferson in Paris” again.
You’re welcome!