Hat

An Item of Clothing for the Head

A hat is, in the simplest terms, an item of clothing which is worn on the head, a kind of headgear. That broad definition covers an enormous range of forms, from stiff formal hats to soft everyday ones, but all of them share the same placement and the same basic purpose as clothing for the head. Hats often have a brim, though the word often matters: a brim is common enough to be expected, yet it is not required for a hat to be a hat, and brimless forms still belong to the family. How a hat stays on also varies. A hat may simply be placed on the head, resting there by fit alone, or, in the case of some women's hats, it may be secured with hatpins, which are pushed through the hat and the hair. The hatpin method suits larger or more elaborately placed hats that mere resting would not hold securely, anchoring the hat to the hair so that its intended angle and position are kept through the day.

Who wears a given hat also depends on its type. Depending on the type of hat, hats are typically worn exclusively by men, exclusively by women, or by either sex. That three-way pattern runs through hat history and hat shopping alike: some styles are made and marketed for men alone, some for women alone, and many familiar styles are worn by anyone. Knowing which pattern a particular type follows prevents a common confusion when comparing hats across periods or catalogues, because the same general shape, a brimmed felt hat, for example, can exist in a men's version, a women's version and an unshared or shared version, differing in proportion, trim and intended wearer while remaining, in structure, the same kind of hat described by its parts.

The Parts of a Hat: Crown, Bill and Brim

Hat vocabulary becomes clear once the parts are separated. The crown is the portion of a hat covering the top of the head. Everything else on a typical hat is arranged around the crown: it is the body of the hat, the part that gives a style its height and shape, and the part from which the lower projections extend. When descriptions speak of a tall crown, a creased crown or a flat crown, they are describing this upper portion and the silhouette it creates. A buyer comparing two hats of the same type is usually comparing crowns first, because the crown decides how the hat sits, how formal it looks and how much headroom it gives, while the lower parts decide shade and spread.

At the bottom of the crown, two different projections must not be confused. The bill is a projection of stiff material from the bottom of the hat's crown, typically forward, and usually for shading the eyes; it is also called a peak. A bill, in other words, extends in one direction only, forward over the face, as on a cap. The brim is a projection of stiff material from the bottom of the hat's crown horizontally all around the circumference of the hat. A brim therefore continues right around the head, front, sides and back, shading and framing the whole head rather than the eyes alone. Keeping those definitions apart, crown above, bill forward only, brim all around, gives a precise language for describing any hat, whether it has a brim, a bill, or, in the simplest soft forms, neither projection at all.