Fez

From Fez the City to Fez the Hat

The hat is named for its city. About AD 980, the haj was interrupted, and the pilgrimages of those living west of the Nile were directed to Fez as to the Holy City; a manufacturer in Fez supplied a new style of headdress that started to be widely used by the students of a particular school. The hat became a mark of intelligence and came to be worn all along the northern shores of Africa. Fezzes of that early form, still worn in Tunisia, Tripoli and Morocco, are two or three times longer than the ones most people picture, with much longer and heavier silk tassels, while the modern fez settled into its familiar proportions: felt, shaped roughly like a canister or truncated cone, tapering slightly towards the top, with a tassel fixed to the middle of the flat top. Colour was once a geography lesson. Fez formerly had a monopoly on manufacture because it controlled the source of the kermes beetle used to colour them; the discovery of synthetic aniline dyes in the 19th century broke that monopoly and allowed manufacture to spread to France, Germany and Austria, and by the beginning of the 20th century Austria, with a factory in Strakonice, was the main centre of the fez industry — while the countries where fezzes were extensively worn did not have a single fez manufacturing plant of their own.

Badge of an Empire, Then a Banned Hat

In 1826 the fez became official. Sultan Mahmud II, looking to break with tradition and update the official dress of the Ottoman Empire's civil service, first considered a three-cornered hat of European descent, but his advisors pointed out that the three corners represented the holy trinity and he reconsidered; a shipment of fezzes had recently arrived from Tunisia, so they were selected instead. The fez was considered the special badge of a Turkish subject, and all, even if not Muslims, were obliged to wear it; women wore fezzes as well, though the women's were smaller and without tassels. The transition was resisted for some time, but by the end of the century Turkey was swept up by a Europeanization wave and the fez became a loved symbol of nationality. A century later the same hat was banned for the opposite reason. Kemal Ataturk, leader of the Young Turks, felt the fez was backward, dressed only in western, notably British, suits and styles, and on 30 August 1925 banned the fez in an attempt to push Turkey into the modern world. The effort was resisted with some fury, several riots broke out, fezzes were seized as illegal contraband, and by the 1930s the fez was almost gone in Turkey. Outside that history, the silhouette survives in lighter roles: the modern fez is often worn by members of the Shriners fraternal organization, and it became the trademark of British entertainer Tommy Cooper.

The fez's other names preserve its travels. Tarboosh comes from Persian sar-boosh, head cover, a plain description carried across languages, and checheya is its other established name — a reminder that a hat worn all along the northern shores of Africa and across an empire accumulates names the way it accumulates meanings. Few garments have been, in sequence, a mark of intelligence among students, the special badge of a subject obliged to wear it, a loved symbol of nationality, and illegal contraband seized in the street, and that sequence is exactly why the fez rewards careful reading: its felt, its truncated-cone shape and the tassel fixed to the middle of its flat top barely changed while everything it meant was argued over, adopted, loved and finally banned.