Cylinder (hat)
The cylinder , often also a top hat , is a tall, stiff, mostly black men's hat with a cylindrical head and a fixed brim . It is made from felt , silk or plush silk , and rarely from straw.
to form
The classic hard glossy cylinder is covered with long-pile velvet, the flat hairs of which shine through light reflections ( Felbel ). The sides of the cylinder are curved inwards (concave).
In the USA, a special variant of the cylinder, the stovepipe hat, gained popularity at times . In contrast to the normal cylinder, it has vertical sides.
In the United States, the half-cylinder also gained great popularity in the second half of the 19th century under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln . The half cylinder is shortened compared to the cylinder and is mostly brown or gray.
The folding cylinder or Chapeau Claque is provided with a mechanism that makes the "tube" foldable so that the hat when folded is only as high as the brim.
history
The hat, known today as a cylinder, developed either from a high hat made of wool felt worn around 1780 or from the so-called beaver hat ( castor hat ) of the English country gentleman . This was considered inelegant until 1850 and was only worn as a riding hat by the higher ranks.
In January 1797 a silk top hat was worn in public for the first time by the English hatter John Hetherington , for which he was allegedly punished for causing a public nuisance . However, the veracity of this anecdote is disputed.
The top hat only became popular in the 1820s, when it became the hat of the citizen, even a symbol of the bourgeoisie par excellence: For example, when Adolph Menzel was awarded the Prussian Eagle Order - surrounded by the uniformed nobility - out of civic pride, Adolph Menzel refused to take off his top hat .
The shako , a variant of the cylinder, has been widely used as a military headgear since the Napoleonic Wars .
At the same time the top hat became part of certain professional costumes, for example the chimney sweep and the coachman.
The early cylinders were made from light gray or light beige felt, more rarely from black, and provided with a narrow band. After 1830 the Chapeau Claque appeared; During this time, the top hat also became a woman's riding hat. In the second half of the 19th century, this headgear was primarily seen as an elegant evening hat in shiny black silk and with a colored, mostly red lining. The gray top hat was a day hat for festive occasions. The Dorveille was a men's fashion-oriented, cylindrical ladies' hat with colored ribbons, bows or borders.
Usage today
Today, the top hat is only worn on special festive occasions, and then only with a formal cutaway or tailcoat .
In dressage riding in the higher classes, a top hat or a bowler is worn with a riding skirt, a top hat is always worn with a tailcoat in the higher classes.
The top hat has become a symbol for magicians today, as evidenced by the phrase "like a rabbit out of the top hat" (when someone comes up with surprising new arguments or ideas).
As a symbol of the free man, the “high hat” can still be found today as part of Masonic clothing in temple work .
Unicode
The Unicode block of various pictographic symbols contains the top hat character (TOP HAT, ?).
literature
- Ingrid Loschek : Reclam's fashion and costume lexicon. 5th edition. Stuttgart 2005. ISBN 3-15-010577-3 .
- Ingrid Loschek: Accessories. Symbolism and history. Munich 1993. ISBN 3-7654-2629-6 .
- Entry cylinder , In: Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon. Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1973, Volume 25, p. 855.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Half cylinder in the hat lexicon at hutshopping.de, accessed on September 10, 2017.