What would you call this hat that Basil Rathbone is wearing as Sherlock Holmes (not the deer-stalker)

In his first two or three Holmes films, Rathbone wore the deer-stalker a lot, I think. But in later films, where they were emphasizing the current-day time frame rather than Victoriana, he was wearing this hat.

To me it looks like a sort of fedora, i.e. with a moldable brim and an indented crown, but it’s made of tweed. Is there a name for this sort of hat? One doesn’t see hats hardly at all any more, so it makes it that much more difficult to identify.

I looked at Irish Tweed hats, but the ones that aren’t flat caps seem to all be bucket hats, I can’t find anything with a defined shape like this one. I suppose Rathbone might have had it designed to his own specifications; for some reason (perhaps only through association) it certainly seems to me to fit the character.

A Pork-Pie hat?

“In the 1939 Fox films The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone’s Holmes sports the cap as regular clothing. When the rights of the films were sold to Universal Studios by 20th Century Fox, Universal made the choice to re-marginalise the films as modern-day (1940s) British propaganda and therefore replaced the deerstalker with a fedora - in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, Holmes and Watson are about to leave Baker Street when Holmes picks up a deerstalker and Watson protests “no, Holmes! You promised!” and Holmes reluctantly puts down the deerstalker in favour of a fedora.” - https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Deerstalker

“A tweed fedora is generally referred to simply as a tweed fedora or by its specific style variation, most commonly a tweed trilby if it has a narrower brim. Because “fedora” describes the shape (pinched crown) and “tweed” describes the fabric, there is no single, unique noun for this combination, though it is often marketed with descriptive terms.” - from GoogleAI

I had a english tweed rain hat like that.

Here they say it is a trilby

Here it is a stalker hat

In London, Holmes likely wore a bowler. never a deerstalker.

A fedora would be much later than Victorian era.

This is a pork pie: pork pie and slice Stock Photo - Alamy

It’s not a favorite style now, so things that are called “pork pie hats” now look a lot more like just generic hats.

Regarding the tweed fedora in the OP, I would have called it a "Inspector Jacques Clouseau’s (Peter Sellers) hat ", (and know I know what they were parodying, which I did not know before).

But of course the Jacques Clouseau hat is only a parody of the Sherlock Holmes hat, and is a bit more “bucket” than Holmes’ fedora.

By the way, “Trilby” is named after the character in the play of that name, and “Fedora” is named after the character in the play of that name. (Both characters were women wearing a “man’s” hat in character). So “Sherlock Hat” is a perfectly cromulent term.

I’ll add Quincy, M.E., Sinatra, Deputy Dawg, occasionally Bugs wore Trilby’s.

ETA The Blues Brothers.

And I wouldn’t call it a Trilby – the Trilby (see picture previously posted) has the rear brim sharply turned up, which I don’t see in the picture of Holmes’ Fedora.

The Trilby snap back is it’s distinction. I believe.

Although Google says Holmes more modern hat was in fact, a Trilby.

So…grain of salt.

In his biography of John Belushi, author Bob Woodward refers to the Blues Brothers’ headgear as “Pork Pie” hats:

I’m not a vocabulary Nazi: people can use whatever words they want to name hats. But, obviously, those Blues Brothers hats look nothing like pork pies: the minimal definition is short, and flat round top.

Exactly. Whatever the biography says. Mistakes get made about fashion stuff all the time. It’s not a crime.
Altho’ some fashion is criminal.

Thanks for the in-movie reference about the hat, and the link.

I don’t think you could call that hat a Trilby, the brim is too broad. So just Fedora is probably fine. It looks less structured than what I think of as a regular Fedora, but that may just be because of the tweed material.

We are talking here about a fictional character and some of the movies that portrayed him. Not a banker.

Yes, that is the exact point, which you would see if you were to read @Dropo’s quote from his link about the period of the later Rathbone/Holmes movies.

Yeahbut- some woman looked at a bunch of pictures of men on a dating site, and without meeting them, declared that the men who had “neckbeards” and wore “fedoras” were all losers- except that the guys were wearing trilbies, not fedoras. Trilbies came into a sorta fashion there for a bit. Fedoras are old school. Of course, being old, that means I sometimes wear a fedora- Indiana Jones hat is a Fedora.

The movies got it wrong-

Where does he say what i said? He never mentioned the period of a fedora.

The canon ( that is what Doyle actually wrote) never used the term deerstalker, but he did - when Holmes went to the Country- describe a hat something like a deerstalker. In the city, Holmes is pictured wearing a Top Hat once, which Holmes would wear if going out in the evening. In the daytime, Holmes would most likely wear a Bowler hat.

Nothing like a fedora. Or the tweed hat shown here, which was for country wear.

It’s a literary character written by a bat shit guy who believed in fairies. Like really.

So he could put his character in any dress or costume he chooses.

The movies and series are all over the place.
I personally liked the Jeremy Brett Holmes the best. He wore lots of hats.

Who the fuck cares about canon about Holmes’ hat? This was a question generated from a movie, i.e. please identify this hat that a character wore in a movie. The movie was set in then-contemporary Britain, the early 40s, so a Fedora hat was entirely time-appropriate for the movie.

I’m sorry if you’re having trouble following the gist of this thread. No, I tell a lie, I’m not sorry, I’m pissed that you insist on cluttering it with crap.

Don’t blame me, blame that Bob Woodward guy.

All the Holmes aficionados. Holmes canon is a pretty big deal, like it or not.

And, we did ID it. Asked and answered. But what did Holmes REALLY wear is a legit question for this thread in Cafe Society.

The hat that Walter White wears in his Heisenberg persona is a pork pie hat.

There’s a Wiki page that’s correct and informative: Pork pie hat - Wikipedia

Oh, and getting back to the OP, could Holmes’ hat be a homburg?

I don’t think so. The Homburg has a curled brim and firm structure, a fedora is softer and the brim is not curled.