It’s a US Thanksgiving meme - pilgrims wearing tophats with a buckle on them.
Why a buckle on a hat?
Simple. You made the hat from a one-size-fits-all pattern. The buckle is for a “belt” which you use to adjust the crown to the head size.
And you thought baseball caps were the first adjustable headwear?
And apparently their shoes were adjustable too.
“…which was the fashion at the time.”
I would not be surprised to find that buckle hats existed only in the mind of an illustrator. That some guy was doing an ad for cranberry sauce and thought an unbuckled hat looked too much like a top hat. Everyone would laugh if you wore a top hat to dinner with godless savages…so some embellishment was needed and an adjustable crown seemed believable.
I think the buckle shoes were the invention of Thom McCann. I distinctly remember back in my middle school years having a pair of desert boots with a prominent buckle front & center. And an onion on my belt…
Which was the style at the time.
Why a flower on a hat? Why a ribbon on a hat? Simple, for decoration’s sake.
The pilgrims never wore buckles on their hats or shoes (laces were more likely, especially for colonists with no need for impractical decoration.) Buckled hats was a London fashion popular in England during the Restoration era 50 years after the founding of Plymouth Rock. In other words, the fashion familiar to the first artists asked to illustrate stories about the English settlement of the New World.
While I certainly have no problem believing that buckled hats were all the fashion 50 years post-facto (just look at all those “historic” paintings where people are wearing the fashions of the painter’s time), there is no such thing as a human with no need for impractical decoration… humans just love to decorate.
Not that I expect this helps, but I think leprechauns are often shown with buckled hats.
Buckles and feathers and other doodads in your hat seems like a good way to throw how fancy you are in the face of the Amish.
Perhaps it started out as a sentimental keepsake. Babies first belt.
My favorite “Win Ben Stein’s Money” category:
The Pilgrim Ate So Much For Thanksgiving He Had To Unbuckle His Hat.
mmm
Why did the Pilgrims have buckles on their hats? This explains everything…
((College Humor video, NSFW. Link is broken so make the obvious fix.))
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=eLkzqLHxJeQ
The Pilgrims men wore buckles on their hats because the ‘equipment’ is usually below the belt!:rolleyes:
So you are saying that the pilgrams were dickheads?
now a lot of boots have buckles just for show especially for women’s boots.
I can’t believe pitifully illprepared pilgrims ( puritans)had time or substance to have decorative objects at all…and I’m pretty sure the native americans didn’t have metal buckles to give them …maybe it was fashionable before they left…i don’t know
Note that it took Smartypants1 nearly five years to come up with that zinger.
mmm
The Pilgrim hats are not top hats. Top hats have a cylindrical crown and a narrow brim and became popular in the late 19th century I believe.
The Pilgrims wore hats with conical crowns and wide brims called capotains.
But yes as others have said, the buckles were fashionable a few decades later in London.
Dammit. Didn’t notice zombie nature of thread.
This thread was fashionable a few decades later in London.
This guy wore a hat with a buckle…some people have considered him a dickhead. 
