FACTORALY - E42 HATS

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Hats have been around for a while. Egyptians and Romans wore them, and so do food delivery riders today. This one's all about this ubiquitous headgear. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Simon! Hello Bruce! How are you doing today? I'm very well thank you, I'm in fine fettle, how are you? I'm also in fine fettle, thank you very much. Glad to hear it. And hello to you, our dear listeners. Hello, yes, and thank you so much for tuning in. It's so nice to have you hear us. So just in case you've accidentally tuned in and you're listening to two men waffle on about absolutely nothing,

you may be interested to know that this is an episode of a podcast called Fact Orally. That's right. I'm Simon Wells. And I'm Bruce Fielding. And we are both voiceover artists by trade, and we both love useless facts. Trivia, whimsy, nonsense, curiosity. That's why we started making this podcast, really, isn't it? Because it's no good if it's inside your brain.

It's all very well, frankly, to have it just sitting there waiting for the odd pub quiz or tv quiz show or something like that so you can impress practically nobody yes but you know sometimes it's nice to get it out it is should i whip out my knowledge go on whip it out what specific kind of knowledge are you going to outwardly whip today i'm going to whip out my knowledge about hats. Hats you say? What a coincidence. I've done some research on hats. Do you have a hat? Well, that's a good question. Yes and no. Technically, I have a cap. A cap? Well, no. Technically, I have several caps. So maybe we should start, you know, you always start with the definition. This is a really tough one, isn't't it i looked it up and it looks like it's something with a a crown and a brim a brim yes which sits atop your head yeah but lots of head coverings yes which are sort of hats

yeah don't fulfill that brief right so maybe we need to rename this episode, not hat, but headwear. So the distinction between a hat and a cap is that, generally speaking, a hat, the top of the hat, sits up away from your head, whereas a cap actually touches your head. So you're quite a hat wearer. I'm more of a cap wearer. I find that hats make me feel suspiciously tall. But then we're the same height, so that doesn't make any sense. And especially wearing a top hat makes you feel incredibly tall. Never tried it. Have you not?

No. I have what's called an opera top hat. Okay, let's start there then. What's an opera top hat? So an opera top hat is when you go to the opera, the last thing that you want is to be A, wearing a hat in front of somebody behind you. Sure. So that would be rude. But also, you don't want to be schlepping a top hat around, sort of sitting on your lap whilst you're watching an opera.

Okay. So the opera hat was invented because what happens is you can squash it together. It's sort of sprung. Ah, one of those. I know what you're talking about. So you can squash it flat, and then it stacks neatly down by the side of your chair in the opera or whatever. Yes.

And then when it's finished, there's a very good way you can sort of flick the flattened opera top hat against the side of your hand, and it sort of pops out and it becomes a top hat again. Yeah. I can't think which one it is, but I'm picturing an old cartoon where a character sort of pulls this flat disc out of a bag and just thrusts his arm inside it

and sort of punches it into shape from the inside. Yeah. So that's called an opera top hat. I never knew that yes and in fact my mine i inherited from my dad and his head was about the same sort of size as mine which is helpful that's good um and uh it it broke the the springing inside it broke and i thought how the hell do you get an opera top hat repaired and it turns out there's a one of the two top there's only two proper hatters in london right um and one of them is called paty okay and they specialize actually in riding hats and stuff but they do all sorts of hats

and i gave it to paty and about a month or so later they gave it back to me as good as new perfect very handy but the top hat is i think in america that where they have top hats but also they have stovepipe hats don't they in america they do yeah yeah a la abraham lincoln indeed yes um i had a quick look at this because when you sort of think of a top hat well when you think of any kind of hat it's it's such a there are so many of them it's such a diverse area um i have a tendency to think of a particular type of hat and associate that with an an era so i think of the stovepipe hat and i instantly think of the bow street runners you know the early police force of east london and things like that um and i used to

think that that was called a top hat it's not a stovepipe hat has a cylindrical shape sometimes even ever so slightly tapered towards the top whereas a top hat has um i'm thinking of the shape of a pringle actually ah the way it sort of you know starts out wide at the bottom sweeps in a bit and then sweeps out again at the top a sweeps in a bit, and then sweeps out again at the top. A parabolic? Yes, a hyperbolic paraboloid. That's the one. But you talked about the policeman's hat. The police used to wear stovepipe hats.

Yes. But then they changed in about 1863 to what is properly known as the Home Office Pattern Custodian Helmet. Well, that just trips off the tongue, doesn't it? Yes. Excuse me while I just take off my Home Office Pattern Custodian Helmet, please. And that replaced the stovepipe back in the mid-1800s.

And it was based on the spiked pickle halber worn by the Prussian army. There's a phrase you don't expect yourself to be listening to. The spiked pickle halber. And generally they have, you know, the star at the front of a policeman's hat. Yes. It's actually called a Brunswick star. Is it? hat yes it's actually called a brunswick star is it and most of the custodian helmets as we're now calling them have this have this brunswick star in front but in the middle there's like an enamel

badge which will say like metropolitan police or whichever police force that happens to be yes and uh yeah so and they used to be made of cork. Oh, did they? And obviously they're reinforced. And these days they have quite a lot of reinforcement in them and they're made of different things. Yeah. But the theory is that because they were made of cork is the reason why CID people used to call their uniformed colleagues wooden tops. That's brilliant. Oh, that's very tempting to get into all the different names of police officers over the years

and where they come from. That's another episode. Let's not. Did you do much research into protective hats? Yes, a little bit. So hats kind of have a number of different purposes. Essentially, before you get into fashion, they are there as a protective item. They're there to either keep your head warm, protecting it from the cold, to keep it dry, protecting it from the rain, or to keep it safe, protecting it from being hit with a heavy object. So helmets, the Norse word helm, literally meaning a protective piece of headwear,

helmets have been around since roughly 2500 BC. And they were military items, you know. But soldiers sort of fashioned their own helmets out of whatever. They were individual. They weren't, you know, standard government issue. Until the Assyrian army around 900 BC made them standard issue. So these were officially their army's helmets. And they were made of bronze and they were used to protect their soldiers against the enemy's blows.

So that's where helmets start. But then they have just diverged into so many basically anywhere that a human being can get themselves hit on the head there's a helmet so they're in the army they're in sport they're on motorcyclists um they're on soldiers they're on police officers as you've as you've just mentioned um and you know you think of the sheer variety of a helmet you might instantly think of a roman soldier's helmet you might instantly think of a piece of medieval armor with the um with the brush and the brushy thing on top brushy thing which probably has a name um all the way through to you know modern modern military with their their sort of greeny colored

pudding bowl looking helmet yes um There are just millions of them. I'm a bit of a medieval fan. I love going to old castles and re-enactments. Were you ever part of the Sealed Knot? I wasn't. I wish I had been. Were you a member? Yeah. Oh, wow. I mean, I was one of been Were you a member? Yeah Wow

I was one of the very common people at the back with a spear or whatever the name for a spear was in the seal Pike I was a pikesman Right, okay, well good for you, I can see that You have a pikesman's face Thank you very much No, I was very much always on the the visitors side just watching the reenactors

doing their stuff um but you know i remember trying on myriad medieval helmets you know the great big beautiful shiny metal things that you you imagine knights in shining armor wearing and and they're flipping heavy they're cumbersome heavy can i also thank you very much for not saying a myriad of. I really appreciate that. You're welcome. What did I say? You said myriad, which is correct.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Catch me using grammar incorrectly. Honestly. Yeah. So these sort of knights in shining armor. Yeah. And they're just so cumbersome.

The eye slots are tiny. They don't move with your head. They sort of stay fixed, so you have to rotate your entire body rather than turning your head side to side. And you just wonder, how on earth did anybody fight a battle in this thing? Evidently, they did. Well, and that's just the headgear. I mean, imagine the rest of the metal that you had.

Apparently, they had to wear it all the time, otherwise they must have been super fit guys. Yes, yes. Just by wearing the kit. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. There's another sort of helmet that we could mention if we don't want to take the pith. Insert drum noise here.

Pith helmets, they're all Marines. Yes yes also well all sorts of people it's actually traditional filipino headgear but but yes it's basically to keep the sun off and and to allow sort of air to circulate through right okay okay they're originally called salakot okay uh but people call them pith helmet they call them them safari helmets, topis, all sorts of things. But originally, they were made from a plant, an Indian sort of swamp plant. And the pith helmet was originally made from the pith material of this plant's leaves. Oh, brilliant.

So that's why it's called a pith helmet. I do like it when there's a good solid reason for something i mean the the way they're made is like they're normally made from cork or various things or bamboo right and and there's usually a spike or a knobbed finial on on the very top the the one i had had a had of course i had one of course you did i wasn't even going to question it, really. I briefly thought to myself, shall I query the fact that Bruce owns a pith helmet?

No, it's just standard. So I don't have it anymore. I don't know where it is, actually. It might be in my storage. Anyway. It's pithed off. So, yes. So the finial on the top of mine, it was circular,

and it had three holes in it. And you could rotate it so that either the three holes were pointing forwards to allow the air to sort of flow through. Oh, I see. Or pointing backwards, which kept you slightly warmer. Oh, that's brilliant. So a little adaptable ventilation system. Yeah. No, they were, I mean, they were designed to keep the sun off and to keep you as cool as possible.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. And they were generally white. Yes. Unless you were taking them into battle. And then? Well, then you would kind of cover them with tea or mud or anything, really, just to make them stand up so that basically Zulus couldn't throw spears at you.

Right, okay. Wouldn't know where you were. That's great. So from the practicality of helmets to the pure fashion of Victorian top hats and things like that, as soon as I start looking at top hats, I think of people like Brunel. I think of people like Beau Brummel. I think of the height of Regency and then Victorian fashion. And I started thinking about hat makers, you know, what's the process of making a hat? Yes. And that made me think of the Mad Hatter. Oh, right. From Alice in Wonderland.

Yes, of course. And the Mad Hatter wasn't, you know, just a one-off standalone insult, sort of sounds a bit derogatory. Yeah. There is a phrase, as mad as a hatter. And this is because hat makers used to use mercury to coat the felt of a hat to make it stiff

so that it would set and stand up in position. Right. And the inhalation of the mercury fumes... Oh, send you nuts. Yeah, cause the mercury poisoning. Also known as erythism, which is a word I hadn't heard of before. But this condition, these fumes,

they attack your central nervous system, they affect your mood, they can make central nervous system. They affect your mood. They can make you irritable, depressed, reclusive. It can even lead to delirium. Hence the phrase, as mad as a hatter. There used to be, in London, we used to have enclaves of various different professions. Yes. And the hatters generally were, I think, around about sort of Shoreditch, Hoxton way.

That's right. Yeah. So also there were big feather manufacturers, sort of like big feather factories around there because the hats and feathers kind of went together. Yeah, sure. More in the ladies' hats than the men's. Yes. But also looking at hat makers, there's a distinction between a hat maker and a milliner. Ah. It's a loose distinction, but generally speaking, traditionally hat makers make hats for men and are usually men themselves.

Milliners are usually women who make hats for women. And the term milliner actually comes from Milan. Oh. and the term milliner actually comes from Milan. Back in the Middle Ages, Milan was an absolute hotbed of hat making and therefore it carried its name over into the word milliner. Well, I'm blowed. I thought it was going to be someone called Thomas Milliner or something like that, but no, it's from Milan. Actually from Milan.

Very good. Lots of hats get their names from places and people and stuff, don't they? Oh, I'm sure they do. There's a couple of brothers, Thomas and William Bowler. You're kidding. No. Is that why we have bowler hats? That's why we have bowler hats.

So the younger brother of the second Earl of Leicester was getting fed up with his gamekeepers getting all sorts of head injuries. Yes. And so he went to Locke and Company. They're a hat company in St. James's who are actually still there. They are, aren't they? They're near the Berry Brothers wine merchants, aren't they? They are, yeah. And they employed these two brothers, Thomas and William Bowler,

to make a robust hat for the gamekeepers and they designed this hat and it came back and it was really really strong in fact it was so strong that to prove its strength before he ordered any Edward Coke jumped on one he basically said put it down on the ground

I'm going to stand on this thing and if it takes my weight then I'll order a load and they did and hence the bowler hat wonderful yes that dome shape is is going to be structurally quite sound isn't yes yes i had always just assumed it was called a bowler hat because it looked like a bowl well that you know there are there are also hats that are named after things they look like like a like a. So there's a hat named after a bell. Is there? Or the French for bell, which is a cloche. Oh, brilliant. And a cloche was very much the vogue amongst young women called flappers.

Yes, OK, yeah. Young women who rebelled against authority were called flappers. And they decided to, rather than having their hair nice and long, they would cut it into this sort of bob. Bob. And the perfect hat for a bob was a cloche. It was actually invented in Paris. A lot of really nice hats were invented in Paris. Yes, sure.

And this one was invented by a woman called Caroline Reboux. Very good. In 1908. Right. And it's usually made of boiled wool. And it's just a very cool hat. So fashionable hats. I started to have a look around the tricorn hat.

That's sort of one of my favorite eras, really. Sort of the 1700s. Mooching around London of one of my favourite eras, really, sort of the 1700s, mooching around London with the likes of, you know, Dr. Johnson, who wrote the dictionary and all that sort of stuff. And they all wore these beautiful triangular three-cornered or tricorn hats. And they were so popular at the time that they weren't even called tricorn hats, they were just called hats, because they were so ubiquitous that that's what a hat looked like yes um it wasn't until quite later on in the 1800s that people started referring to them as tricorns in order to distinguish them from other types of hat and um then came along the bicorn which by the same logic you can imagine only has two corners

is that the one that you that's basically like, you can either wear it sort of sideways or front to back? Exactly that, yes. So think of Napoleon. Yes. Napoleon wore a bicorn sideways. And then a little bit later on the fashion became to wear it sort of head on, you know, forwards in a sort of rather military looking style um so i was looking around those and that led me to an interesting discovery that one of napoleon's bicorn hats was sold at auction a few years ago for 1.4 million dollars blimey which i think is quite a bargain actually actually yeah to own napoleon's hat for only a million and a half dollars. That's not bad. That's pretty good.

There are other headgear that were worn in the army, which I looked into, which I just love. And that is bearskins. Oh, yes. Of the marching bands. Yeah. Yeah. So bearskins, they were originally made of bearskin. That would make sense.

And they are different to the Busby, which is a smaller version of the bearskin. Yes. And I thought, well, they're just so British, aren't they? They're incredibly British, the bearskin. But they're not. They're worn by a load of other people. Really? The Australian Pipes and Drums Band of the 3rd Battalion in Australia wear a bearskin.

But it's hot over there. Well, I know. People often faint under a bearskin, don't they, on parade? Absolutely, yeah. They're worn in Belgium. The Belgian Royal Escort wears them. Wow. They're a slightly different shape.

They're not sort of like the round one. They're sort of flat-topped. In Denmark, bearskins were introduced to make their guards more uh taller and more into i mean the danish are quite tall anyway and there are two units of the italian army uh the netherlands the the royal netherlands army uses one that in spain the king's the first king's immemorial infantry regiment in sri lanka the sri lankanorial infantry regiment in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan artillery uses them. In Sweden, the Swedish army's lifeguards wear them.

But in Sweden, they are made of fake fur. Okay, right. Interesting. And, of course, here, and strangely enough, and Uruguay, the company of sappers of 1837, they used a bare skin cap. And America, the company of sappers of 1837, they used a bearskin cap. Right. And America. The second company, Governor's Footguard of the Connecticut State Guard, wear them as well.

Just them? Yeah, just them. That's very niche, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, there are a few drum majors who wear them as well. Wonderful. But the bearskin is a fabulous thing. My older sister used to date a clarinet player in the Welsh Guards. And so we would frequently go along to beating retreats and trooping the colour and that sort of thing and

march along near him and sort of take in the spectacle. And I remember looking at his, he wasn't a large man, he was quite, quite skinny. and i just remember thinking this hat must weigh a ton and it must make you so hot um and i remember he did allow me to hold his hat at one point and it was blooming heavy very very fluffy but blooming heavy i had a quick look at um how much we spend on hats, because it's one of those subjects, as soon as you start poking, you realise quite how much there is. There are just so, it's impossible to name even a fraction of the variety of hats that are out there.

According to Euromonitor, there's an estimate that the global hat and cap market is worth $15 billion a year. Wow. A year? A year. Okay, that's quite a lot. It is quite a lot, isn't it? Yeah, that is quite a lot. I mean, there are hats which are quite expensive.

I mean, there is a hat which is estimated to be worth between £3 and £5 billion. Billion with a B? With a B. Tell me more. You would have seen it quite recently when Charles was wearing it in the abbey. Oh, would that be the crown by any chance? That would be a crown.

Oh. Yes, the Kalinin II, the diamond in the middle, is estimated to be worth about 400 million pounds. That's a lot, isn't it? That is a lot for a hat. Wow. Now, there's probably a difference between a crown and a diadem and a tiara. Oh, gosh, yes.

Now, are they hats, though? Well, that's what I was going to ask. Because the crown at least does have, it's got a brim. Yes. And it technically has a crown. Well, yes. Like a red velvet job. I think has a crown I guess like a red velvet job I think of a crown and I picture something that's like a very very large

ring that you would put on your finger it doesn't have a top oh like a sort of medieval sort of crown yes exactly yes it's just a cylindrical thing with no bottom no top it's just a ring you plop it on your head. That's a crown. Is that a hat?

Can it be a hat without a covering? Is it just headwear? Who knows? Or is it just what you wear for your profession? You know, if you happen to be king, then that comes with the job. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are other hats that people wear for their jobs, aren't there? Things like a chef's hat.

Which I used to know the name of. A toque. Thank you. But let's call it a chef's hat because everybody knows it's called a chef's hat. Yes, exactly. But you know they're pleated. Yes, I do. Do you know how many pleats there are and why?

You overestimate my ability to remember stuff, Bruce. I used to know that. But then I learned some other things about i don't know street cones and whatever and then the things fall out of your ears exactly yes so tell me so there i think there are supposed to be a hundred pleats in a chef's hat which um is the same number of ways that you can cook an egg. Brilliant. Now, you know how I like a Guinness World Record? I know you love them.

I went around looking to find out the biggest hat in the world. And you know what? I can't find a definitive answer. Is it Donald Trump's? Biggest head in the world. It's just impossible. There is one hat that is the tallest and it's, you could hardly even call it a hat, but it's like 10 metres high. Could you wear it and still walk? I've only seen still photos and it is very, very much made for the purpose of claiming to be the tallest hat in the world. Utterly impractical.

Well, without wanting to waffle on and list all the hats that we haven't talked about, I think that might be the end of the facts that I have. We don't know that much more about hats, but you probably do. Yes. And if you do, then wherever you get your podcast, whether it's on your podcast player or whether you're looking at this on on youtube or on our on our own website um factorally.com

please uh let us know and give us a comment absolutely please do yeah if you can if you can drop some photos anywhere share some photos on social medias. Photos of people wearing the daft. We will give a prize of a shout out to the person wearing the most silly hat. What more could you ask for? Oh, I bet there are some listeners here who have got some funny hats. Oh, we will absolutely shout your name to the heavens if you happen to have a really, really silly hat. Wonderful, wonderful. And that's not the only way you can engage with us. You really silly hat. Wonderful. Wonderful. And that's not

the only way you can engage with us. You can like us. You can subscribe to us. You can share us. You can go and tell your friends about us. And all of that attention would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. If you have enjoyed that, if you'd like some more, please come again next week for another episode of Factorily. Cheerio. Au revoir.