Pork pie hat
Encyclopedia
Hat
A hat is a head covering. It can be worn for protection against the elements, for ceremonial or religious reasons, for safety, or as a fashion accessory. In the past, hats were an indicator of social status...
made of felt
Felt
Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be of any colour, and made into any shape or size....
or straw
Straw
Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry stalks of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and...
. It is a type of fedora
Fedora (hat)
A fedora is a men's felt hat. In reality, "fedora" describes most any men's hat that does not already have another name; quite a few fedoras have famous names of their own including the famous Trilby....
which has a cylindrical crown and flattish top. This style of crown is called a "telescopic crown", but the hat overall resembles the boater
Boater
Boater may refer to:*Boater, a type of hat*Boater, one of the first disposable diapers*Someone involved in boating...
hat. It is short (usually 3" to 4" in height) and has an indentation all the way around its top, allowing it to pop upward slightly when worn. Furthermore, as stated in a newspaper clipping from the mid-1930's: "The true pork pie hat is so made that it cannot be worn successfully except when telescoped." The same clipping refers to the hat also as "the bi crowned" [sic].
The pork pie hat originated in the mid-19th century. Originally a ladies’ hat, it is named for its resemblance to the pork pie
Pork pie
A pork pie is a traditional British meat pie. It consists of roughly chopped pork and pork jelly sealed in a hot water crust pastry . It is normally eaten cold as a snack or as part of a meal.-Types:...
dish. According to the American fashion reporting of the 1930's, the smooth dark brown felt was the original popular model, but the "fuzzier" green model came in close second.
The pork pie hat was a staple of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
man-about-town style for many years. Commonly worn by American Civil War soldiers and the US Army (unofficially) throughout the 1880s. Pork pie hats are often associated with jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
musicians and fans. Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
wrote an elegy for jazz saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
great Lester Young
Lester Young
Lester Willis Young , nicknamed "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist. He also played trumpet, violin, and drums....
called "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a jazz standard composed by Charles Mingus originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 as listed below, and released on his album Mingus Ah Um. Mingus wrote it as an elegy for saxophonist Lester Young, who had died two months prior to the recording session...
", since Young was noted for his ever-present, broad-brimmed porkpie. Originally, the hat was seen as a sporting cap, popular at tennis matches.
In Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, the hat was popularized by the 1960s "rude boy
Rude boy
Rude boy, rudeboy, rudie, rudi or rudy are common terms used in Jamaica. In the 1960s it was also used for juvenile delinquents and criminals in Jamaica, and has since been used in other contexts...
" subculture, which traveled to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, influencing both the mod and skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
subcultures.
Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first...
frequently wore a Stetson
Stetson
Stetsons are the brand of hat manufactured by the John B. Stetson Company of St. Joseph, Missouri.Stetson eventually became the world’s largest hat maker, producing over 3.3 million hats a year in a factory spread over . Today Stetson remains a family-owned concern...
cowboy hat which he modified into a wide-brimmed porkpie. Singer Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
was known to be partial to the hats, and they became a trademark of the silent film comedian Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
, who handmade his. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
was often seen wearing a porkpie. The hat was prevalent in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
in January 1944, when Australian troops
Australian Army
The Australian Army is Australia's military land force. It is part of the Australian Defence Force along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. While the Chief of Defence commands the Australian Defence Force , the Army is commanded by the Chief of Army...
defeated a Japanese stronghold at Kankiryo Saddle.
The porkpie hat enjoyed a slight resurgence in exposure and popularity after Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...
’s character Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle wore one in the 1971 film The French Connection
The French Connection (film)
This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
. Doyle was based on real-life policeman Eddie Egan
Eddie Egan
Edward Walter "Eddie" Egan was a New York City Police Department detective whose exploits were the subject of a book and movie, both entitled The French Connection...
, who played the captain in the film, and his exploits in 1961; Egan was famous all his life for wearing a pork pie hat, and refused to surrender his hat to Gene Hackman for the film. The producers were forced to obtain Hackman's hat elsewhere.
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is an American television drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. Set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White , a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer at the beginning of the series...
. White also goes by the alias "Heisenberg" whose persona is associated with the hat.
The animated Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
characters Top Cat
Top Cat
Top Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.-History:...
, Huckleberry Hound
Huckleberry Hound
The Huckleberry Hound Show is a 1958 syndicated animated series and the second from Hanna-Barbera following The Ruff & Reddy Show, sponsored by Kellogg's. Three segments were included in the program: one featuring Huckleberry Hound; another starring Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo Boo; and a third...
, Hokey Wolf
Hokey Wolf
Hokey Wolf is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon about the adventures of a con-artist wolf who is always trying to cheat his way into the simple life...
and Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear is a fictional bear who appears in animated cartoons created by Hanna-Barbera Productions. He made his debut in 1958 as a supporting character in The Huckleberry Hound Show. Yogi Bear was the first breakout character created by Hanna-Barbera, and was eventually more popular than...
all wear porkpie hats. Fozzie Bear
Fozzie Bear
Fozzie Bear is a Muppet, created by Jim Henson. He is an orange, particularly fuzzy bear who works as a stand-up comic and has a catchphrase, "Wocka Wocka Wocka". Shortly after telling the joke, he is usually the target of rotten tomatoes and ridicule, especially from hecklers Statler and Waldorf...
from The Muppets
The Muppets
The Muppets are a group of puppet characters created by Jim Henson starting in 1954–55. Although the term is often used to refer to any puppet that resembles the distinctive style of The Muppet Show, the term is both an informal name and legal trademark owned by the Walt Disney Company in reference...
wears a pork pie hat.
Joaquín Monserrat
Joaquín Monserrat
Joaquín Monserrat, known as Pacheco was a Spanish comedian and host of children programs. Since 1960, he established in Puerto Rico where he became one of the most known and loved hosts of children programs.-Biography:...
, known as Pacheco in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
is the host of many children's TV shows and is known for his porkpie hat and bow tie
Bow tie
The bow tie is a type of men's necktie. It consists of a ribbon of fabric tied around the collar in a symmetrical manner such that the two opposite ends form loops. Ready-tied bow ties are available, in which the distinctive bow is sewn into shape and the band around the neck incorporates a clip....
.
The term is also used in reference to brimless hats worn by sailors of the U.S. Navy, the United Kingdom and other nations. This hat is typically round, flat on top and wider at the crown. This type of hat is also known as a "square rig".