Green Pith Helmet

This Pith, although it doesn't look it in these photos, is green or dark Khaki.

It also had a 5 pointed star badge on red background originally making it a replica of an NVA helmet worn in the Vietnamese war. 

(NVA = North Vietnamese Army)

These helmets continued to be used in Vietnam until early 21st Century

Gifted to my hat collection as Christmas present.

Lets Go Swimming

This is a latex swimming cap.

Sometimes known as a bathing cap.

Swimming caps are worn for several reasons, protect the hair from chlorine in swimming pools, keep hair relatively dry, even help keep the head warmer and to reduce drag in competitive swimming races.

They can also be compulsory in some pools to stop loose hair clogging filters.

Swimming caps can be made of lycra, silicon or latex, they are normally tightly fitted

Master of Hat Fu

Sometimes I have nothing to say

at least in English

" Cōngmíng rén shuō yǒu yītiān huì xià yǔ "

" Zhǔnbèi hào zhàndòu "

Máoróngrōng de quántóu

Shaman Eats Straw

This hat or more accurately headdress, came from a theatre production

It makes an ideal headdress for tribal shaman or witch doctor.

The only clue to its origin is a label which says 'Tumji' which make it sound like it was for a African based character.

Made of a mix of leather, artificial plant life and straw.

The jackal/fox eyes are painted.

This headress found its way to me via my favourite trader Chows Emporium.

I went past it at several markets before, eventually deciding it had a use.

Nón lá

A simple straw hat.

This hat is a typical Asian farmers Coolie Hat, Rice Paddy hat, Non-la, used as an evaporation cooling device when dipped in water and sun protection. 

The conical shape is mainly Vietnamese, but still worn in other Asian countries.

The bamboo in this one woven to create a raised pineapple skin texture

Peasants Summer Hat

Falling apart straw hat, perfect just the thing

The ideal sunny weather hat. 

Wet them and they help cool the head even more

This one has seen better days but for playing the part a beggar or poor peasant its perfect

Straw Boater

Leading on from the school hat theme to a straw hat theme we have the boater which was a common part of the British, United States and South Africa and a few others boys school uniforms.

The Straw Boater is also known as the simply the Boater, plus the Skimmer, the Cady, the Canotier, the Basher, the Katie, the Somer and the Sennit.

Also worn in Japan were can be called the Can-can Hat or the Suruken.

The straw boater is equally a fashionable women's hat.

Straw boaters are a great summer hat, they were popular in the 19th and early 20th Century but have since gone out of fashion except for rowing events or barbershop music groups.

The Straw boater is normally made of a stiff sennit straw and has a flat crown and brim, usually with a ribbon around the crown.

A fact from Wikipedia says they were supposedly worn by FBI agents as a sort of unofficial uniform in the early 20th Century. 

Bad Scholars Hat

Dunce's hat

The dunce's hat was given to children in Victorian schools as a punishment to pupils who were disruptive, clowned around and did not want to learn.

The hat was traditionally a tall white cardboard cone and painted with a big D or the word dunce.

As well as wearing the hat the children were made to stand in a corner and left to be mocked by their fellow pupils.

I'm not sure this tactic or punishment actually worked as I suspect the children made to wear the cap did not care, were made class heroes, but even more likely they probably had some actual real learning difficulty which the Victorian teachers had no way of understanding or were trained to deal with.