Silk Hat Views
A top hat, silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat[1] (sometimes also known by the nickname topper ) is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat worn prior to and including the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, it is usually worn only with morning dress or white tie, in dressage, as servants' or doormen's livery, or as a fashion statement.
Top hats started to take over from the tricorne at the end of the 18th century; a painting by Charles Vernet of 1796, Un Incroyable, shows a French dandy (one of the Incroyables et Merveilleuses) wearing such a hat.[2] The first silk top hat in England is credited to George Dunnage, a hatter from Middlesex, in 1793.[3] Starting in the 1890s, it was claimed that a London haberdasher named John Hetherington introduced the top hat in 1797, but this is untrue.[4] In 1803, Jägers in the Imperial Russian Army began wearing top hats (Some would say that it was more of a variation of the shako), but dropped them in 1812, to the more suitable Litwka Shako, along with the rest of the armies foot units.
Between the latter part of 18th century and the early part 19th century, felted beaver fur was slowly replaced by silk hatter's plush , though the silk topper met with resistance from those who preferred the beaver hat. The 1840s and the 1850s saw it reach its most extreme form, with ever higher crowns and narrow brims. The stovepipe hat was a variety with mostly straight sides, while one with slightly convex sides was called the chimney pot .[6] The style we presently refer to as the stovepipe was popularized by Abraham Lincoln during his presidency; though it is postulated that he may never have called it stovepipe himself, merely a silk hat, or a plug hat. It is said that Lincoln would keep important letters inside the hat.
During the 19th century, the top hat developed from a fashion into a symbol of urban respectability, and this was assured when Prince Albert started wearing them in 1850; the rise in popularity of the silk plush top hat possibly led to a decline in beaver hats, sharply reducing the size of the beaver-trapping industry in North America, though it is also postulated that the beaver numbers were also reducing at the same time. Whether it directly impacted or was coincidental to the decline of the beaver trade is debatable.
Silk Hat Images
