From bowlers and trilbies to baseball caps and beanies, hats have always revealed far more than taste — signalling class, tribe, ambition and masculinity itself.
In April 1966, an episode of the BBC satirical programme The Frost Report delivered one of the most famous comedy sketches in British television history. Standing in descending order of height and social standing were three men: John Cleese in a bowler hat, Ronnie Barker in a trilby, and Ronnie Corbett in a flat cap.
“I look down on him because I am upper class,” announced Cleese. “I look up to him because he is upper class,” replied Barker. “I know my place,” added Corbett.
The sketch has endured because it distilled Britain’s class system into a few unforgettable lines. Yet the hats themselves did almost as much of the work as the dialogue. Long before logos, watches or trainers announced status, Britain used hats.
Rush hour – London Bridge (c.1930)
Credit: Chronicle
The bowler belonged to the establishment: bankers, civil servants, solicitors and City men commuting through London beneath clouds of pipe smoke and certainty. The trilby reflected the respectable ambitions of Britain’s growing middle class — salesmen, clerks and office managers travelling between suburbia and the city. The flat cap belonged to industrial Britain: miners, mechanics, dockworkers and craftsmen whose labour powered the nation through the twentieth century.
A hat was not merely practical. It was social architecture.
A sea of top-hats at Waterloo Station as racegoers left by train for the second day of the Ascot meeting (16 June 1937)
Credit: Smith Archive
For much of the first half of the twentieth century, a man leaving the house bareheaded was considered not unfinished, but undressed. Railway stations, football terraces, racecourses and high streets formed vast monochrome seas of felt, tweed and fur. In Britain, hat-wearing was so deeply ingrained that the decline of the practice caused genuine panic within the industry.
Scenes at the F.A. Cup semi-final at Highbury in 1949 reveal a diminishing proportion of men wearing (or waving) headwear, as Britain's "hatless brigade" began to emerge.
Credit: Smith Archive
By 1948, the alarm bells were ringing. That December, Britain’s hat manufacturers launched an advertising campaign under the memorable slogan: “If You Want To Get Ahead, Get A Hat.” The newly formed Hatters’ Development Council feared that younger men were abandoning the habit altogether. One newspaper lamented that “the hatless brigade has become an army.” Another reported that four out of five men under thirty-five in some towns were “unkindly indifferent” to hats.
“The hatless brigade has become an army.”
Credit: British Hatters' Development Council
The campaign itself was wonderfully earnest. Young men were informed that hats improved both their careers and their romantic prospects. According to the manufacturers, “eight out of ten young women prefer men with hats.” Advertisements depicted bareheaded men looking forlornly at sharply dressed rivals accompanied by admiring women. One could almost hear the desperation rustling beneath the felt.
The timing, however, was unfortunate. Britain was already changing.
"Eight out of ten young women prefer men with hats."
Credit: British Hatters' Development Council
The First World War had accelerated informality. The Second World War reinforced it. Men returning from military service had grown accustomed to utility and practicality. Car ownership expanded, reducing the need for weather protection on foot. Offices became warmer. Society itself became less rigid. Hats, once symbols of dignity and adulthood, increasingly looked like relics of a more deferential age.
Then came the 1960s, and with them, hair.
The Beatles on the set of A Hard Day's Night in 964. The rise of the "mop-top" generation transformed men's hair into a statement of identity – leaving little room for hats.
Credit: Collection Christophel
The rise of youth culture delivered a challenge the hat industry could never fully overcome. A generation that worshipped hair was unlikely to cover it. The mop tops of The Beatles and the swagger of The Rolling Stones transformed men’s grooming into a statement of identity. Hats no longer concealed social difference; they concealed carefully cultivated haircuts.
The Rolling Stones (December 1968)
Credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo
By the 1970s, traditional hat-wearing had collapsed with astonishing speed. Department store hat counters shrank. Many old manufacturers disappeared entirely. The fedora became associated with ageing commuters, racegoers and men stubbornly resisting the modern world. Younger generations viewed hats with suspicion — or worse, amusement.
Formula One World Champion, James Hunt, on his wedding day in 1974. As the decade progressed, long hair and traditional formal headwear became increasingly difficult companions.
Credit: PA Images
And yet hats never vanished completely.
Cinema kept them alive.
When Raiders of the Lost Ark arrived in 1981, Harrison Ford’s battered fedora became almost as iconic as the bullwhip.
Harrison Ford on the set of Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981)
Credit: Camerique
The Untouchables restored the glamour of 1930s menswear through sweeping overcoats and sharp-brimmed fedoras. Gangster films and noir thrillers repeatedly returned to hats because headwear possessed something modern casualwear often lacks: silhouette.
Andy Garcia, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner and Charles Martin Smith in The Untouchables (1987)
Credit: TCD/Prod.DB
Then came Peaky Blinders.
Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders (2013)
Credit: Flix Pix
Few television programmes have had a greater influence on modern British menswear. The flat cap, once associated with elderly gardeners and northern grandfathers, suddenly returned as an object of masculine cool. Younger men embraced tailoring, overcoats, heavy boots and textured wool once more. Barbershops multiplied. Whiskey bars flourished. Heritage became aspirational.
The flat cap returned not as necessity, but as costume — and eventually, identity.
Steve McQueen in a simple baseball cap. By the late twentieth century, America’s most democratic form of headwear had replaced the formality of the fedora and trilby.
Credit: Album
Contemporary headwear now reflects tribe rather than class. The baseball cap, America’s great democratic contribution to menswear, has become almost universal — worn alike by athletes, billionaires and off-duty actors attempting anonymity outside airports. Luxury houses reinterpret it in cashmere and suede, while younger brands treat it as a blank canvas for cultural affiliation.
Brad Pitt and his partner Ines de Ramon arrive at Silverstone Circuit, Northamptonshire (July 2024)
Credit: PA Images
The bucket hat belongs to another world entirely: creative industries, musicians, and urban minimalists. The fedora survives in smaller numbers, requiring a degree of confidence — and perhaps a touch of danger — to avoid appearing theatrical. Meanwhile, the flat cap has settled into a comfortable modern role somewhere between countryside practicality and heritage affectation.
Daniel Craig attends Premier League match, Liverpool v Newcastle United at Anfield – wearing a hat!
Credit: PA Images
The old hierarchy has disappeared. Few modern men are judged by the hats they wear, and fewer still wear one every day. Yet hats continue to perform the function they always have: they tell the world something about the man beneath them.
The bowler, trilby and flat cap no longer divide Britain in the way they once did. But sixty years after Ronnie Corbett stood beneath John Cleese and looked up at Ronnie Barker, men are still using hats to describe themselves — even if they no longer realise it.