---
node: garment_top_hat
type: garment
slug: top_hat
title: "Top hat"
lead: "The top hat is a tall cylindrical hat with a flat crown and a narrow brim, made in silk plush over a stiffened body. It was ordinary men's headwear for a century and is now worn only where formality has been deliberately preserved."
published: 2026-08-18
updated: 2026-08-18
image_file: top_hat.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1910_top_hat.jpg"
image_author: "Cullen328 — a silk-plush top hat of about 1910 by Alfred Bertiel, de Young Museum"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

The classic hat is a shellacked gossamer body covered in silk plush, giving a surface with a sheen no felt can match; the crown is straight or slightly waisted and the brim curls at the sides. Height rose through the nineteenth century and then fell. A collapsible version, the opera hat or gibus, has a spring frame so it can be flattened and carried under the arm at the theatre, which was its whole purpose.

## How it is worn

It is worn level, removed indoors and raised in greeting, and it is set down crown-down so the brim is not distorted. Grey is worn at racing and weddings, black elsewhere. It goes with the morning coat or with evening dress and with nothing casual, and because it must be brushed and can be ruined by rain, its wearer is announcing that he is not walking far.

## History

Silk hats appear in London in the 1790s and become universal male headwear through the Regency and Victorian periods, across every class — a labourer's battered topper was as common as a banker's new one. The bowler took the working end of that range in the 1850s and the soft felt hat took the rest by the 1920s. The last silk-plush loom stopped in the 1960s, so a genuine silk hat is now an antique, and modern ones are fur felt.