Hat & Headwear Definition List Page 5

Hats Definitions List Pg. 1

Hats Definitions List Pg. 2 

Hats Definitions List Pg. 3

Hats Definition List Pg. 4

Hat Definitions List Pg. 5

Hat Definitions List Pg. 6

Hat Definition List Pg. 7

The Cap Today: Soft, Low and Everywhere

The cap won the twentieth century. Where brimmed hats demanded care, storage and occasion, the cap is soft, close and cheap to make — and page five is its census. The baseball cap dominates globally: a structured crown, a curved peak, an adjustable back, and a front panel that became advertising space. The beanie trades the peak for warmth, knitted to the skull. The flat cap keeps a small peak and a low, soft crown in tweed or cotton — called cloth cap, driver cap, golf cap or Windsor cap depending on who is selling it — while its fuller cousin, the eight-panel Gatsby or newsboy cap, carries more volume and more nostalgia. The tuque is Canada's knitted answer to winter, the tam Scotland's soft wool disc, and the beret — listed here among caps as readily as among hats — crosses military, artistic and everyday dress without changing its simple felted form.

Skullcaps form the page's second family: the yarmulke and taqiyah worn for prayer and daily observance, the plain skullcap of work and rest. Small, brimless and close, they are among the oldest head coverings of all, and their definitions here are kept distinct, because similar shapes carry different meanings.

Caps of the Past

The historical caps show the same forms solving older problems. The aviator's cap — close leather with ear flaps and goggle straps — was cockpit equipment before it was costume. The capeline was a steel skullcap worn by medieval archers, a cap in shape and armor in fact, bridging this page and the helmets of page 6. The barretina, a soft Catalan cap, and the Phrygian cap, the conical soft cap of antiquity that became a symbol of liberty in revolutionary art, carry regional and political meanings far beyond their cloth. The mob-cap gathered a woman's hair in a loose linen puff for housework, and the poke bonnet framed the face in a deep brim — caps and bonnets blurring at the edges, as categories in real wardrobes always do. Page five's lesson is humility for classifiers: the cap is not a lesser hat, it is the form that outlasted the hat.