Types of Hat reference for writers (or anybody, really)
Okay, I just got pseudo-corrected on fashion in a fan fiction. I've been yelled at for this and people have tried to prove me wrong. Friends, I am here to correct those who have tried to correct me in the past.
With costume knowledge, and years of working in the theater department.
First off, let me explain that there are many different types of hats. And in those categories, there are many different types of a certain hat. Fedoras included. Someone once asked me what the difference between the hat they were wearing and the fedora I compared it to. Let me clear the air with my second point, and that is naming the differences between certain fedoras and hats that look like them.
This is a trilby. This is the thing that dudes wear to try and be classy. It is commonly mistaken as a regular old fedora, when it is, in fact, entirely different.
THIS is a classic fedora. You wear a fedora with suits, but you can also wear it without. Indiana Jones wore a Safari fedora, which is less fancy compared to a classic fedora, but you should all know what Indiana Jones' hat looks like by now.
You can also wear a trilby with suits, but trilbies were not fashionable in the 40's. The fedora was popular among the male population from the 20's on through the 40's and early 50's. The trilby became popular in the 60's. They have both been around for quite some time, but if you're going to do a show or fiction based in the 20's - early 50's with mobsters in America, you're gonna need a classic fedora. Were there trilbies in the 40's? Absolutely. But Mobsters and gentlemen didn't wear them as much as the Fedora.
For further reference, this is a porkpie hat,
which is another type of fedora, and pretty popular in its straw form in the 1910's and onwards
Often confused with the trilby.
Commonly found amongst the cowboys of the West (and South)
This is a boss of the plains hat
Which is another type of Stetson.
That should cover it for hat confusion in this particular area.
I really needed to get that off my chest, but I'm glad I could add on.
