Hat & Headwear Definitions — hats, caps, helmets and headwear terms from Apparel Search
The Akubra hat is a distinctive part of Australian culture, and Akubra is also the company name of one of Australia's most famous producers of hats, although the name is used more often to describe the hats themselves. The company's range is so large and so ubiquitous that in Australia nearly any hat of a similar design is likely to be referred to as an Akubra. The business began with Benjamin Dunkerley's hat-making factory in the early 1870s.
The Akubra
hat is
a distinctive part of Australian culture.
Claimed to be derived from an Aboriginal
word, Akubra.
Akubra is
also the company name of one of Australia's
most famous producers of hats, although
the name tends to be used more often to
describe the hats themselves. Indeed, the
company's range of hats is so large - and
so ubiquitous - that in Australia nearly
any hat of a similar design is likely to
be mistakenly referred to as an Akubra.
History
The original hat-making factory, not called Akubra at that time, was founded in the early 1870s by Benjamin Dunkerley. A recent immigrant to Australia, Dunkerley set up shop in Tasmania after inventing a machine that removed the hair tip from rabbit fur, leaving the softer under-fur for use in the making of felt hats.
Dunkerley and his family later relocated to Sydney, in New South Wales, where he was joined by Stephen Keir I. While working for Dunkerley Hat Mills, Kier married Ada Dunkerley, Benjamin's daughter. After Benjamin Dunkerley's death in 1918, Stephen Kier took over the reins of the company, moving to a larger premises and adopting the brand name Akubra.
Akubra is famous for providing the Slouch hats used by Australian forces in both World War One and Two. In the 1950s, the Akubra company expanded its range when it won the licence to produce Stetson hats in Australia, and by the 1970s, the company was so successful that it was forced to relocate again, to larger premises in Kempsey. Today, the company is still a family concern. Its current owners are the great-grandchildren of Benjamin Dunkerley.
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The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/akubra 5/14/05 |
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Every Akubra starts as rabbit fur, and the company itself started with a better way of preparing that fur. Benjamin Dunkerley, a recent immigrant to Australia, founded the original hat-making factory in Tasmania in the early 1870s, before the business carried the Akubra name at all. His contribution was a machine he invented that removed the hair tip from rabbit fur, leaving the softer under-fur for use in the making of felt hats. That distinction between tip and under-fur is the whole craft in miniature. Felt for a durable hat needs the fine, soft fibres that mat together into a dense, weather-resistant material, and preparing that fibre cleanly and consistently is what turns raw fur into a hat body worth shaping. A machine that did the separating work reliably gave a small colonial factory a real foundation: a steady supply of the right material, made the same way batch after batch, on which cutting, shaping and finishing could be built.
The business then followed the classic path of a family firm growing through marriage, succession and larger premises. Dunkerley and his family relocated to Sydney, in New South Wales, where he was joined by Stephen Keir I. While working for Dunkerley Hat Mills, Keir married Ada Dunkerley, Benjamin's daughter, tying the company's future to the family twice over. After Benjamin Dunkerley's death in 1918, Stephen Keir took over the reins of the company, moving to larger premises and adopting the brand name Akubra, a name claimed to be derived from an Aboriginal word. Today the company is still a family concern, and its current owners are the great-grandchildren of Benjamin Dunkerley. That unbroken family line, from the Tasmanian factory of the early 1870s through the Sydney years to the present owners, is unusual in modern manufacturing, and it is part of how the hat is understood in Australia: not as an anonymous product, but as the work of one family carried across four generations.
War made the Akubra name national. The company is famous for providing the Slouch hats used by Australian forces in both World War One and World War Two, and supplying headgear to soldiers in two world wars placed the maker's work on the heads of the country's most respected figures. A hat worn in service acquires associations no advertising can buy: durability in hard conditions, Australian identity abroad, and a link between the home-front factory and the men it equipped. The peacetime decades broadened the range instead. In the 1950s the Akubra company expanded when it won the licence to produce Stetson hats in Australia, bringing a famous American hat name under Australian manufacture, and by the 1970s the company was so successful that it was forced to relocate again, to larger premises in Kempsey. Growth, in other words, never stopped being a space problem for this firm, from Dunkerley's first move out of Tasmania onward, each stage of success meant a bigger factory.
The surest measure of the hat's place in Australian culture is linguistic. The company's range of hats is so large, and so ubiquitous, that in Australia nearly any hat of a similar design is likely to be mistakenly referred to as an Akubra. Very few brand names reach that point, where the maker's name becomes the everyday word for the whole style, used even for hats the company never made. It means the name tends to be used more often to describe the hats themselves than the company behind them, and a buyer asking for an Akubra may mean the genuine family-made article or simply the broad Australian felt hat form in general. For that reason it is worth checking the maker as well as the style when the distinction matters, for collecting, for quality, or for supporting the original firm. What is not in doubt is the standing the confusion itself proves: a felt hat born from Tasmanian rabbit fur and one immigrant's fur-preparing machine became, within a century, the hat Australia recognises as its own. The through-line from beginning to end is continuity: the same fur-felt craft Dunkerley founded his factory on, the same family ownership passing from his generation to his great-grandchildren, and the same readiness to grow, from Tasmania to Sydney to Kempsey, whenever the hats found a larger public, whether that public was soldiers needing Slouch hats in two world wars or civilians who came to use the maker's name for the style itself.
The original hat-making factory, not called Akubra at that time, was founded in the early 1870s by Benjamin Dunkerley, a recent immigrant to Australia who set up in Tasmania. Dunkerley had invented a machine that removed the hair tip from rabbit fur, leaving the softer under-fur for making felt hats.
After Benjamin Dunkerley's death in 1918, Stephen Keir I, who had married Benjamin's daughter Ada, took over the company. He moved to larger premises and adopted the brand name Akubra, which is claimed to be derived from an Aboriginal word.
Akubra is famous for providing the Slouch hats used by Australian forces in both World War One and World War Two. Supplying the forces' hats in two world wars helped make the name part of Australian national dress and memory.