Now, I had of course seen the famous photos of Bat Masterson and Butch Cassidy wearing derby hats, but it was news to me that the derby was in fact the predominant head accessory of the old West. (You mean Hollywood has lied to us???)
I looked up the first cite, which turns out to be a newspaper article from 1957: The Hat That Won the West. It appears to be well-researched:
Does anyone have reason to doubt the truth of this statement?
Are there any Westerns which have depicted the majority of men in derby hats rather than Stetsons?
And what of the cowboy boot? Is Hollywood lying to me about that, too?
Is the entire self-image of Texas built on a fraud?
I’m pretty sure the Calvary wore the blue stetson.
I think you’re right about most Western men wearing the Derby.
The stetsons advantage was out on the plains herding livestock. The extra wide brim shaded the face & neck. Those work hats would get dirty and sweaty. They may have worn derbys in town.
My problem with this theory is that relying on old photographs is not an accurate means of tracking “every day” wear versus “Sunday-go-to-meeting” clothes. Photos were relatively new, relatively pricey, and people tended to dress in their best for them. I know for a fact that people often had different hats for different purposes; my great-grandfather (who eventually ran a shoe store in Bisbee AZ during the famous gunfight at Brewery Gulch but also worked a small ranch) passed down two hats to my grandfather - a bowler type that was his “store” hat, and a cowboy type that was his “field” hat.
The bowler was a much nicer hat, and the one he’d wear for pictures, strolling with his lady about town, or going on a nice train trip (people used to dress up for travel), but the cowboy hat was better at protecting him from the sun when he was working out in the field. My own personal experience (I love hats!) has been the same - I love the look of a bowler, but it doesn’t keep the sun off the back of your neck.
No proof to offer either way; but it was always my assumption that the derby was the hat worn in town; and a traditional cowboy hat was worn while working. Much like a ball cap today, worn frequently by people working outdoors.
From hatistory.com: “Bigger brimmed soft felt hats became the fashion of fall and winter, and the derby became a hat for special or formal occasions.”
After posting this thread it occurred to me that I have some anecdotal evidence from my own family to offer. My grandfather spent the 1890s in Bell County, Texas and Martha, Oklahoma. I have two photos of him from that period, and in both he is wearing a Stetson. Pic 1. Pic 2.
But I am still intrigued by the notion of dusty cow-towns populated by men in bowlers. (Even if those were only their going-into-town hats.) It would be interesting to see a Western depicting that.
Thank you Tapiotar. Yes, he was a pretty striking dude, I guess. He died years before I was born, so I never got to know him. Would have loved to have heard stories of Texas in the 1890s.
Yes, no doubt there would have been wool caps. I have seen references to working class men of that era as “wool cap boys.” (In the context of describing a political constituency.)
Please note that Stetson is a brand, not a design. Stetson made, and still makes, dress and casual hats in addition to cowboy hats.
In aceplace57’s link, we see that Stetson’s “Boss of the Plains” model seemed to be the beginning of the cowboy hat. It could be reshaped into various configurations, many of which would be recognized as cowboy hats, but in its factory shape it looks like a bowler with a wide flat brim.
Reading the Wiki articles on Stetson and Cowboy hat, it appears that the truth lies somewhere between Hollywood and bowlers.
I’m sure the men who settled the West wore all sorts of hats. The ones popular Back East like the bowler & the top hat, plus caps & whatever else immigrants might wear.
But most of cowboy culture came from Mexico–where they wore broad-brimmed sombreros & pointy-toed riding boots, often with tooled leather decorations. I’ll bet Texans & other southwesterners had adapted these fashions before Mr Stetson designed his first hat. Texas Rangers started wearing the Stetson early on.
The artists & showmen (like Buffalo Bill) who began romanticizing the West even before the frontier closed probably thought the cowboy hat was more dashing than Eastern styles. As film & TV carried on the story of The Old West, who wanted to see guys wearing those old fashioned bowlers? Even when men still wore hats, styles had changed…
This is correct. People wore whatever headgear was appropriate for their work, or just whatever they had. Bowlers were popluar as a “dress-up” hat; they were also something of a trademark for railroaders, as mentioned above, especially for locomotive engineers. They were also preferred by miners who worked underground and would coat them with tar or resin to form a primtive “hard hat”. Laborers commonly wore cloth caps…the “flat cap” or “pub cap” types were univeresally popular, and a lot of vintage photographs show men wearing soldier caps. Riders and farmers usually used some kind of broad-brimmed sombrero or stetson type of straw, felt or leather to shade the face & neck, or to shed rain.
We usually think of the pull-on “cowboy” boots as being typical western wear. Of course the pointed toes and high heel were important for riding, but the slip-on type, if used at all, were mostly for dress-up wear. Working cowboys, then and now preferred a lace-up riding boot. for better support. Laboring types wore something similar but with a lower heel and rounded heel.
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