---
node: garment_flat_cap
type: garment
slug: flat_cap
title: "Flat cap"
lead: "The flat cap is a soft rounded cloth cap with a small stiff brim sewn to the front, the crown falling forward over it. It is the cap of the British working man of the last century and a half, and it has been fashionable and unfashionable several times since."
published: 2026-08-18
updated: 2026-08-18
image_file: flat_cap.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloth_flat_cap%2C_faceted_tartan_plaid_pattern_1.jpg"
image_author: "Acabashi — a tweed flat cap, the crown buttoned down onto the brim"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

The crown is cut from four to eight panels of wool tweed or cotton, sewn to a band and to a short brim, and the front of the crown is stitched or buttoned down onto the brim so the whole thing lies flat. There is no structure inside: it can be rolled into a pocket, which is half the reason it was worn. The classic English pattern is a single-piece crown; the eight-panel newsboy and the deeper bunnet are its regional cousins.

## How it is worn

It sits well down on the head with the brim low, and it is not adjusted or tilted the way a hat is — the whole point is that it stays put in wind. It comes off indoors, in church and when speaking to someone owed respect, and the touching of the brim survives as a greeting in the north of England and Ireland. Tweed is the country cloth and flat wool the town one.

## History

An Act of 1571 required English males over six to wear a wool cap on Sundays, which is where the association with ordinary men begins, but the modern flat cap is a Victorian garment, standard on factory and dock workers by the 1890s. In the twentieth century it split in two: the working cap in the north, and the tweed country cap of the landed classes, which is the same object read in the opposite direction. Both are still being made.