the.com/bowler hat
Armor for the head, invented so gamekeepers could stop getting brained by poachers.
means A stiff, round-crowned felt hat with a narrow curled brim, once the standard headgear of English clerks, bankers, and bowler-hatted gentlemen everywhere.
from Commissioned in the 1840s by a London hat shop for an English landowner who wanted his gamekeepers protected from low branches and swung sticks, the hard felt dome was made by hatmakers named Bowler — hence the name, though some credit the alternate name 'billycock' to the client who ordered it. It later climbed the social ladder from gamekeeper's gear to the uniform of the buttoned-up city gent.
- origin
- made in 1849 for a gamekeeper, not a gentleman
- real name
- called a coke hat in england, after the client
- durability test
- makers stomped on it to prove it wouldn't crack
- icon status
- magritte and chaplin made it surrealist and comedic at once