From street-stopping scandal to timeless symbol of style
There’s a top hat in the shop at the moment.
It isn’t demanding attention. It sits quietly, upright and composed, as though it has seen enough of the world to know there’s no need to explain itself. I’ve always loved objects like this — the ones that carry their history lightly, but unmistakably.
A top hat isn’t just an accessory.
It speaks of ceremony and confidence, of craft and intention — and of a time when what you wore mattered because it said something about how you wished to move through life.
As I’ve been photographing and re-photographing this particular hat (as one does), I found myself wondering how something so simple — tall, black, quietly authoritative — came to mean so much.
So let’s start at the beginning.
Comic postcard with top-hatted figure, early 20th centuryA playful reminder that the top hat has long been associated with drama, surprise, and a little mischief. Author’s collection
A Hat That Turned Heads
It’s 16 January 1797, and the streets of London are in uproar.
Dogs bark. Children scream. Women reportedly faint.
The cause, according to later accounts? A haberdasher named John Hetherington, stepping out in public wearing a brand-new silk hat — tall, glossy, and unlike anything the city had ever seen. The story, retold a century later in The Hatter’s Journal, claims Hetherington was even arrested for causing a public disturbance.
Whether true or not, the tale captures something essential: the top hat was bold, modern, and shocking from the very start.
What we know for certain is that by the late 18th century, tall hats were emerging as a striking alternative to the tricorn and bicorne hats then in fashion — and once seen, they could not be ignored.
Welsh family group wearing top hats, c. mid-19th century Credit: John Thomas (1838–1905), Wales. Photograph. Public domain.
Before the Top Hat: A Puritan Beginning
The top hat did not appear from nowhere.
Its ancestor was the capotain, or Puritan hat — tall, cylindrical, sometimes slightly conical — worn in England as early as the 1590s. These hats later crossed the Atlantic with Puritan settlers to North America and gradually evolved in form and meaning. They still form part of the Welsh national-dress today.
By the end of the 18th century, as urban life expanded and fashion became more expressive, men’s hats quite literally grew taller.
1795 portrait of Pierre Sériziat by Jacques-Louis David showing an early top hat with a curved, waisted crown worn by a gentleman.
Image courtesy of the Musée du Louvre, Paris (public domain).
The First True Top Hats
The earliest historically verifiable top hat is attributed to George Dunnage, a Middlesex hatter, in 1793.
These early versions featured dramatic hourglass shapes, narrower at the centre than at the brim and crown. They were quickly adopted for their exquisite craftsmanship and the elegance they lent their wearers.
By the early 19th century, the top hat had become essential city wear for the upper and middle classes throughout Britain and Europe — a symbol of refinement, authority, and modernism.
19th century engraving showing different styles of beaver felt hats used in military, naval, clerical and civilian dress.
After a late 18th–early 19th century engraving (public domain).
Enter the Beaver: Luxury, Craft, and “Mad Hatters”
Despite being known as “silk hats,” early top hats were often made from beaver felt.
Beaver pelts, imported from North America, were processed using mercury to achieve a dense, waterproof felt. The process was long, complex, and dangerous — giving rise to mercury poisoning among hatters and the enduring phrase “mad as a hatter.”
By the 1830s, beaver fur fell out of favour (to the great relief of both beavers and hat-makers), replaced by silk plush — a luxurious fabric with a lustrous sheen created by brushing the nap in one direction.
The very last silk plush factory closed in 1968. Today, the finest traditional top hats are made from fur felt known as Melusine.
Gentlemen wearing top hats, mid-19th century, public domain
The Golden Age of the Top Hat
The mid-19th century marked the golden age of the top hat.
Crowns grew taller, sometimes reaching 20 centimetres, giving rise to the iconic stovepipe hat — forever associated with Abraham Lincoln, who was said to store speeches and notes inside its lofty crown.
At this time, no formal occasion was complete without a top hat. Gentlemen arrived at the theatre, the opera, or a ball wearing one — and promptly removed it indoors. This practical inconvenience led to one of fashion’s most ingenious inventions.
19th century collapsible opera hat shown open and folded flat, also known as a chapeau claque. Image courtesy of Lily Absinthe (lilyabsinthe.com).
The Opera Hat: Fashion Meets Engineering
Around 1840, French hatter Antoine Gibus invented the chapeau claque, or opera hat — a collapsible top hat mounted on a spring-loaded metal frame.
With a sharp tap, it folded flat, allowing it to be slipped under theatre seats or into cloakrooms. Elegant, theatrical, and faintly miraculous, it became a sensation and remains one of the most charming feats of fashion engineering.
Couple wearing silk top hats, c. 1850
Source: Sarony & Major, Lovers’ Morning Recreation, c. 1850. Hand-coloured fashion print. Public domain.
The Top Hat in Women’s Fashion
During this period, the top hat also found its way into women’s fashion — particularly through riding habits and equestrian dress. In the early to mid-19th century, women adopted adapted versions of the men’s top hat for horseback riding, favouring its secure fit and unobstructed vision over bonnets, which restricted peripheral sight. These hats were often slightly straighter in form, sometimes trimmed with feathers or veiling, and made initially from beaver felt before silk became more common. The result was a striking blend of practicality and authority, lending women a composed, modern presence that echoed the confidence of the age. In these images, the top hat becomes not only a symbol of formality, but of movement, independence, and quiet strength.
Australian gentleman with top hat, 1870
A self-portrait by William H. Bardwell, showing formal dress and top hat as markers of professional identity and respectability in colonial Australia.
Credit: William H. Bardwell, Self-portrait (age 34), 1870. Albumen silver carte de visite. National Portrait Gallery. Public domain.
The Top Hat Comes to Australia
Although often thought of as purely British, the top hat travelled — like tradition itself — with migration, ambition, and ceremony.
In colonial Australia, particularly throughout the 19th century, the top hat became part of the visual language of respectability. Early photographs show Australian gentlemen — lawyers, merchants, civic leaders, pastoralists — dressed in frock coats and top hats, standing proudly in studios or on dusty main streets that were still finding their shape.
In cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, the top hat was worn for formal occasions, church, official duties, and civic life. It signalled authority and aspiration — a way of saying we belong to the wider world, even here at the edge of it.
Kapunda Croquet Club, 1867, trove.nla.gov.au/work/208433810
There is something especially striking about these images: the contrast between Australia’s light, heat, and roughness, and the careful formality of the clothing. A top hat beneath an Australian sky feels earnest, hopeful — a country presenting itself with confidence and care.
Over time, practicality prevailed. Softer hats replaced rigid ones more quickly here, shaped by climate and working life. Yet the top hat never disappeared entirely, lingering in ceremony, law, racing culture, and formal dress, just as it did elsewhere.
By the early 20th century, the top hat had moved from daily dress to the world of cinema, where it endured as a visual shorthand for refinement, ceremony, and theatrical flair.
A Gentle Decline — and an Enduring Presence
After World War I, social norms shifted. Bowler hats, fedoras, and softer felt styles became everyday wear. After World War II, the top hat largely vanished from daily life, made impractical by automobiles and a more relaxed approach to dress.
Yet it survived. Today, the top hat remains reserved for moments that call for tradition and ceremony — worn with white tie and morning dress, at weddings and formal daytime occasions, at Royal Ascot and other historic racing events, and in dressage and formal equestrian competitions where precision and heritage are still honoured. It also endures in ceremonial, legal, and diplomatic dress, and in the visual language of magicians and performers, where its silhouette continues to signal occasion, authority, and a touch of theatre.
Modern illustrative comparison of 19th-century hat styles
Why Is It Called a “Top Hat”?
Despite popular belief, the name has nothing to do with being worn by “top” people.
It is simply called a top hat because it is tall — higher than all other hats of its time.
Sometimes, the simplest answer is the most satisfying.
A top hat and its travel-worn box Time held in felt, leather, and habit.
A Top Hat at Kitten Vintage
And here we are, more than two centuries later.
The top hat may no longer cause riots in the street, but it still turns heads — especially when you encounter one unexpectedly, resting quietly among everyday objects. There is something thrilling about that contrast: an accessory once reserved for the most formal moments now waiting patiently for a new life.
And because no top hat should be without a story, this one may just find its way into an upcoming Sunday Night Story — a gentle tale of where it’s been, what it has witnessed, and who might be meant to find it next.
Have a look at ‘What’s out of the Box’ too see more photos of our hat!
Deb💋