The fedora is a soft felt hat with a crease lengthwise down the crown and are pinched in the front on both sides. Any hat that resembles the soft felt version is also usually called a fedora, including straw and twill ones. Similar hats with a C-crown (with an indentation for the head in the top of the crown) are occasionally called fedoras. It is usually worn by men, but ladies' versions can also be found.

The popularity of the fedora has resulted in being able to purchase one in nearly any style. Fedoras can be found in nearly any color imaginable, but black, grey, and brown are the most popular and universal.

In Europe a fedora is also called a trilby. They typically have a shorter, "stingy" brim and the back of the brim is distinctively more sharply upturned as a result.

The word comes from the title of a 1882 play by Victorien Sardou, F
dora, whose heroine wore this style of hat.

Famous uses

The fedora was worn mostly in the early part of the twentienth century within urban industrialized settings as a stylish way to protect from the wind and weather while being compact enough to deal with the newer technologies such as the automobile. It is often associated with Prohibition-era mafia and tops off most zoot suits.

• It is the signature hat of Indiana Jones with a safari style brim.
• Many Orthodox Jews wear black fedoras.
• The comic strip hero Dick Tracy wears a yellow one.
• Clark Kent was often seen wearing one (including in the 1978 feature movie of Superman), though in more recent incarnations it has been absent.
• In the Bowery Boys movies, Slip Mahoney always wore a fedora with the brim folded up.
• Larry Campbell, the mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia, is known to be quite fond of wearing a fedora.
• Frank Sinatra, performer of the mid-1900s and member of the Rat Pack, was often depicted wearing a fedora.
• The Red Hat logo features a red fedora on its Shadow Man logo. In addition, the Red Hat community-oriented distribution of Linux is called Fedora.