When one thinks of a hard-boiled detective, a soft-boiled detective, a gangster, a plain-clothes cop between the '20s and the '50s, a well-dressed middle class man or man on the skids one often thinks of the fedora topping the noggin of the man. Occasionally the eight-paneled cap (to be addressed in another post) comes to mind, but the fedora is the iconic hat for the period of time from the 1920s to the middle of the 20th century. It was the man's man hat that showed that the wearer was not a man to be messed with because he may have a sap in his back pocket or a pair of fists that had callused knuckles caused by the contact of hand to face.
Oddly, the fedora, like the trilby, was named after a work of fiction and first popularized by a woman. Trilby was a character in the novel Trilby by George DuMaurier. When the novel was made into a stage play the actress playing Trilby wore a hat that is the basis of the current trilby hat. The fedora hat was first worn by the actress Sarah Bernhardt while performing in a play entitled Fedora. It was a very new thing in the 1890s when the most popular felt hat worn among those outside the working class were the top hat, the bowler and the Homburg.
So what is a fedora? Basically, it's a felt hat (either fur felt or junk felt) with a a crown of about 4 1/2 tall with a black grosgrain hatband of about 1 1/2 wide, and a brim about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 wide. The typical American style has a teardrop shaped dent on the top, a pinch in the from and the front of the brimmed snapped down and the back snapped up. Typically Americans and Italians wear fedoras well and the English wear them badly. The typical Englishman wore the hat with the brim flat all around as if they were still wearing a boater. The American style had a bit of snap to it. It was, at one time, to America what the Digger hat was to Australians -- a source of national pride for some and embarrassment to others.
To this writer there are only three colors of fedora that are proper (ignoring Hasidic Jews, which will be addressed later in this post). Those colors are gray, dark gray and olive. The brown fedora worn by Indiana Jones in the pulp movies is a freak that has gained some popularity in culture. But it really is not good as a color because about the only clothes it can be worn with and look decent are work clothes and a brown suit. Grey, dark grey and olive go with anything from a camp shirt and jeans to a Brooks Brothers suit. The hat in those colors is infinitely adaptable. The hat is almost a chameleon. It makes a sinister man look more sinister and a kind man look more kind, a tough guy look tough and a mild man look tough.
Modern Hasidic Jewish men often wear black fedoras, but Hasidic men usually wear black suits and the color of the hat is more an expression of their faith than of personality or fashion. A black fedora is a somber thing almost like the Victorian undertaker's veiled silk hat.
Over the years since the 1950s various hat makers have come out with fedoras ranging in color from snow white to sapphire blue, ruby red, emerald green (which usually comes out a few weeks before St. Patrick's Day) and anything in between. It would not surprise this writer if a hat maker has not come out with a rainbow colored fedora for the homosexual contingent. And in recent years various fashion houses catering to the hoi-polloi have tried to make the fedora popular by having under-dressed, overly worked out young men wearing fashions that seem to come from the imaginations of a typhoid fevered adolescent wear fedoras of silly colors and often not fedoras at all -- just trilbys called fedoras.
And that is where the fashionistas make their mistake. In fact, that is wear all modern hat makers make their mistake. They imply that the hat makes the man or completes the man. They imply that the hat wears the man, when, in fact, the man wears and makes the hat. A mild man may wear a snap brimmed fedora and look tough, but by wearing the hat the mild man does not become a tough guy but shows the world that he has an inner toughness that has always been there.
Be it known that this writer has never owned a fedora. He's still awaiting the day when he can afford to buy one that will last his lifetime. But his father, the late Baron, owned a fedora, and despite the fact that he was the kindest and gentlest man imaginable, he looked like a tough guy when he wore it; and he could be a very tough guy when crossed.
So, if you're a man, consider yourself in a fedora. Maybe even buy a Borsolino if you've got the money. You have to look at your mug in a mirror and your personality and decided if you're fedora material. You may be a natural trilby or porkpie wearer. If you're a woman, despite the Bernhardt thing, a fedora really isn't for you unless you're working at a dig in the Valley of the Kings.
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