LONDON LETTER:The bowler started out as a piece of health and safety equipment but thanks to Jude Law and Co it's back in fashion, writes MARK HENNESSY
CHRISTOPHER HORTON remembers passing dozens of men in pin-striped suits walking briskly across Waterloo Bridge in the late 1970s, wearing bowler hats and carrying rolled umbrellas. They were, however, among the last to cling to old habits for the bowler was by then already passing into history.
Given fashion’s ability, or need, to recycle the old, the bowler is now on the way back, boosted by actor Jude Law’s decision – along with other less well-known actors – to wear one. Now, high-street retailer Austin Reed is to stock the bowler – at first only in its Regent Street branch in London.
In time, they will spread out across the country as the store uses the image of the bowler to trumpet its history as it celebrates its 110th anniversary. Reed’s supplies of £50 (€56) hats will come from China, since the British-made original would cost £200.
Bemoaning the use of Chinese production, Georgina Abbott, once of the now defunct British Hat Guild, said the new-found interest in bowlers could have been a great opportunity for hatters.
“But everyone is so used to buying fashion on the cheap that even Austin Reed customers are not prepared to spend more than £50 for a bowler,” she said.
Though it became de rigueur for City gents, it was first designed as a piece of health and safety equipment on the orders of William Coke, a member of the Earl of Leicester’s family who wanted to protect his gamekeepers’ heads from low-hanging branches when on horseback.
Up to then, the gamekeepers had worn top hats, which were easily knocked off. By the time Coke brought his commission to hatter Lock Co of St James’s – a business still happily alive today – he knew what he wanted: a close-fitting, low-crowned hat that would not fall off.
They gave the contract to hatters William and Thomas Bowler. On completion, William Coke was presented with the prototype and promptly went out onto the street and jumped up and down upon it. Satisfied that it would withstand a blow from a tree, or a poacher, he bought it for 12 shillings.
Lock Co named it after their client, in line with usual practice.
The hat, in time, adopted the names of its designers, though it was still called a Billy Coke, or billycock, in Norfolk for many decades afterwards in honour of the man who inspired its creation.
Later, it was adopted by cavalry officers for parades and their successors today wear it still as it is considered “correct dress for walking out”. Sir Winston Churchill is probably its best-known wearer, while princes Harry and William have worn it during official duties.
It is nonetheless an egalitarian hat. Prior to its creation, the hat a man wore placed him firmly in the social hierarchy. The gentry wore top hats; working men flat caps. The bowler changed everything. While its historical legacy is that of the City gent, it was the hat of choice for street-traders, omnibus drivers, fish-sellers, shipyard workers, knife-grinders and countless other trades.
Its history is full of surprising quirks. The bowler, not the Stetson, was “the hat that won the West”, in the words of one historian of the time. Cowboys and railway workers liked it: cowboys because it would not fall off while riding; and the railwaymen because it did not disappear when they put their head out the window.
In Bolivia and Peru it became a favourite of Quechua and Aymara women after they copied the fashions of British railway workers brought in during the 1920s. Legend says that a Bolivian outfitter accidentally ordered too many and decided to create a new market by deliberately selling them to women.
Within 10 years, an Italian milliner, Borsalino, began making bowlers specifically for sale to Peru and Bolivia, though, today, they are made locally. The local fashion dictates that a hat should be worn one size too small, at least to the eyes of someone from the West.
The Aymara women, incidentally, believe that bowlers enhance fertility. In Nigeria, men living on the Niger Delta wear it still, combined with a walking stick, copying fashion trends set by colonials a century ago.
By the 1950s, however, the bowler had become what it had never been up to then – a badge of class – when the working classes began to abandon hat-wearing, leaving stockbrokers and others working in the City of London and the military as the last bastions. By the time Patrick Macnee wore his in the popular 1960s television series The Avengers the days of the bowler were numbered and its limited popularity was further damaged by Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch, which made wearing one ridiculous.
However, it never went away. Lock Co say that they have continued to sell 4,000 to 5,000 a year; MJ Booth, chairman of Jermyn Street hatter Edward Bates, which supplies “stylish hats and caps to discerning gentlemen from their enchanting shop”, says it has remained “a continual” seller.
“We have always sold it to the military for ‘undress’ parade and to tourists who regard a bowler as being quintessentially British.
“The bowler never went away; it just took longer vacations,” said Booth, with all the typical understatement of the British gentleman.