This ’50s Lee homburg originally belonged to someone who worked at the Bush Funeral Home in New York. Dark hat. Dark business.
Funeral Hat
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Category Archives: Hats
1930s homburg
This homburg has lost its liner and sweatband, but bears the old style union tag, which dates it from the early ’30s or before. For everyone who says the homburg is and was a formal hat, I urge you to actually look at period photos, and to everyone who says homburgs are and were stiff hats, I urge you to actually feel a vintage one.
Bailey Brown Derby
You don’t see a lot of brown derbies these days. Lots of black ones survived, but the slightly more casual, slightly less common brown ones didn’t make it nearly as well. This is a modern one. Well- I say modern- but I consider any hat made from the mid ’70s on to be pretty modern. It’s soft like a homburg and has a homburg curl to the brim, not a derby curl. But the blocking is all bowler- too low to take a crease, so I guess that’s what it is.
Canvas workwear porkpie
You see these a fair bit in old photos and old movies, but hardly at all in the flesh. Not as many made as caps or fedoras, inexpensive, cheaply made, disposable and worn in harsh conditions.
1930s Pilgrim Carlsbad cowboy hat
This Pilgrim Carlsbad was available mail-order throughout the 1930s and 1940s. With the quality of the trimmings on this one, I’d say it’s probably from the 1930s. It’s a big, curled brim cowboy hat, tom mix creased. And wool felt- this was a budget hat- a working man’s hat.
Vintage BSA hat
This old Boy Scouts scoutmaster hat has shrunk up to almost nothing. That’s just what wool felt does when it gets wet, and why, if you can, you should buy fur felt. But what a band. Hand tooled (wonder if someone got a merit badge for that?) with a roller buckle.
Without the sweatband, it’s pretty much impossible to date the hat itself, other than to say “old”.
Lee Leisure fedora hat
Blue fur felt with decorative spiral stitching, rope trim, welted brim edge, thin leather sweatband, silkscreened crown with sporting scenes.
1930s Miller Cowboy Hat
Wide brim, tall crown, thin ribbon, super thin floppy felt. Sort of a sign of things to come- a shift away from the curled brims and wider ribbons.
Unlined with silkscreened crown logo. Lots of imprints on the sweatband.
The Victory Cap
This one dates smack-dab in the World War II period. It has the union jack and an English Bulldog on the liner. This is deadstock from a Canadian source.
The aircraft Cap
Another deadstock cap, this time from a Canadian source. Really evocative graphics on the lining, and a nice bold herringbone tweed.
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