One Hat Many Styles

From a basic wide brimmed felt hat you can change its look into many other styles. 

The photos below are all the same £5 felt hats from Primark, all created with quick stitch, you can cut and decorate to make many more better looks. 

Below the basic black felt hat as you buy it.

Below a Bicorn

Below a Tricorn

Below almost a Quadricorn, it needed a wider brim really, but 4 points were almost achieved.

Below a Yokel Hat

PS these were all purchased for £1 at the end of the season by my friend Dave who the master of spotting a bargain.

Not a Lamp shade, its a Hat

This is not a lamp shade, its a genuine reproduction medieval straw hat from the 13 or 14th Century, that is in fact very comfortable and cooling in the summer like most straw hats.

This was purchased from a polish trader at the Tewkesbury medieval fair in 2015
See this link 

This style of hat was worn by both men and women probably field workers if you look at contemporary drawings. ( See here )

Ransom Beanie

The Beanie hat, a brimless cloth hat.

This beanie was a give-away at film fair, I'm guessing around 1996 since that was when the film was released. 

I use the hat as a general purpose hat that I keep at the ready in my winter coat for when the going gets bitter cold, like this week.

Flatcap

The flat cap or flatcap is a rounded cloth cap with a small stiff brim in front and is usually made of wool, tweed or cotton and lined with a softer fabric. 

 The hat is also known at least according to wikipedia as a Cabbie cap, Longshoreman's cap, Cloth cap, Scally cap, Wigens cap, Ivy cap, Golfers cap, Duffer cap, Duckbill cap, Driving cap, Jeff cap, Irish cap, Newsboy cap, Crook cap, or a Paddy cap, in Scotland its called a Bunnet, in Wales its called Dai cap. That's more names than I knew and I think easily beats all the names you can find for other styles of hats. 

 The original flat cap can be traced back as far the 14th century.

The growth of woollen cloth hats of many styles came about when a act of parliament in the late 16th century made not wearing a woollen hat on Sundays for males an offence, basically the law was designed to stimulate the wool trade, this gave rise to common wearing of caps and so became a recognised symbol of common man in England, even today its still associated with a working class man even though many wealthy and iconic people wear them. 

 Flat caps became very popular in 19th and 20th century throughout Britain, Ireland and United States, although it seem to have been totally supplanted in current times by the baseball cap especially in  United States. 

 The hat I'm wearing a traditional northern England flat cap