Welcome back to the Gentleman's Gazette!
In today's video, we'll discuss three varieties of traditional men's hats namely the trilby,
Homburg, and the pork pie hat, as well as how to wear these styles and others with confidence.
This video is the third in a three-part series on hats.
The first part which you can find here covered terminology and basic construction materials
and the second part which you can find here discussed etiquette related to wearing hats.
As we mentioned, this third part will feature some hat styles that we recommend adding to
your collection.
Also, you can take a look at our previous videos covering hats here.
Guides related to the fedora, the flat cap, and the Panama hat, as well as a guide on
how to select the right hat for your specific face shape.
Speaking of our Fedora guide, it's common practice these days for most people and even
for some retailers to refer to any hat with a shaped crown and a full brim as a fedora,
however, this isn't quite correct.
Rather, there are a number of other specific hats with similar attributes that have their
own unique histories.
We'll cover three of these fedora siblings today and tell you how you can wear them with
style.
We'll start today with the hat that's most closely visually related to the fedora, the
trilby.
Also referred to as a sloucher or slouch hat and named for the heroine of an 1894 novel
by George Du Maurier.
The trilby is sort of a little brother to the standard fedora.
Like the fedora, the trilby also features a creased tapered crown with a front pinch
but it's slightly more streamlined with a shorter snap brim which usually features a
simple sewn edge and sometimes a very narrow band across the bottom of the crown.
Originally associated primarily with the trench coat, the trilby evolved in the 1920s to a
softer hat worn often in the English countryside and also at the racetrack.
For these reasons, it's typically seen as a slightly more informal hat than the standard
Fedora but not by much.
In recent years, small trilbies with very narrow brims often printed in loud patterns
across the hat and made from synthetic materials became a popular fashion item, however, these
types of trilbies also quickly developed something of an unsavory reputation and brought the
standard fedora down with them to a certain extent.
However, if you stick to wearing a classically styled trilby, as I do for most of my own
personal hats, you'll be able to overcome this stigma.
Also, they do look particularly good on men with strong facial features so take that into
consideration as well.
Now that we've covered the little brother of the fedora, let's turn our attention to
the older brother, so to speak, that being the Homburg.
Next to the top hat, the Homburg is the most formal of all men's hats.
It's named from the German spa and resort town where it was first seen and also where
it was popularized by King Edward the seventh when he was then still Prince of Wales, on
vacation in the 1890s.
Proper for both day and evening wear, the black or dark blue Homburg is worn with a
dark business suit, stroller suit, or tuxedo depending on the occasion and also pairs well
with a Chesterfield overcoat in winter in other various colors.
Also, if you'd like to check out our guide on proper Black Tie attire as well as our
guide on morning dress, you can consult those guides here.
The Homburg is constructed with much more stiffness than the fedora and features a brim
with a slight curl around the edge that's also typically faced in the same sort of ribbon
that you'll find around the crown.
Speaking of the crown, the homburg's crown is typically very tall and also features a
center dent.
A favorite hat of diplomats and politicians like Winston Churchill and also featured prominently
in The Godfather film series, the Homburg typically looks best on old and more distinguished
gentlemen as well as men with defined facial features.
You can still wear a Homburg if you have a rounder face, however, just try to find one
with a slightly lower crown and a bit of a wider brim to balance things out.
Our last sibling of the fedora to be covered in today's video is the one that has perhaps
the most unique name, the pork pie hat.
Also called the English pastry hat, the pork pie got its name from its telescoped crown
which features a slight lip around the upper edge of the crown and therefore looks similar
to a traditional English meat pie.
Normally featuring a snap brim, pork pies flourished among college students in the 1930s
and were also popularized by Hollywood stars like Fred Astaire and Cary Grant as well as
jazz musicians like saxophonist Lester Young who was elegized by his contemporary bassist
Charles Mingus in the 1959 song goodbye pork pie hat.
Pork pies also have a strong and storied association with sporting events particularly horse-racing
furthermore, the golfer Sam Snead was often known to wear pork pies made from straw often
in coconut and featuring bands with colorful patterns like Madras.
Pork pies are definitely on the more casual end of the spectrum as full brimmed hats go
and they can tend to give the wearer a slightly squat appearance.
As such, shorter men and men with rounder faces should exercise caution when wishing
to wear a pork pie.
There's a basic overview of these three different styles.
We've given you a few general tips already on how to wear each of them but here are a
few more pieces of advice on how to wear all of these types of full brimmed hats with confidence.
Many men are hesitant to wear traditional full brimmed hats for one primary reason,
they'll look out of place, dated or otherwise affected.
It should be said that this fear isn't necessarily completely without merit.
If the hat doesn't match the rest of the outfit in terms of formality, isn't being worn with
the proper detail like snapping the brim down for example or doesn't correspond well
to the wearer's face shape, it will look out of place.
Confidence is key, however, and if you pair that confidence with the following tips, you'll
be sure to be able to wear any of these styles with relative ease.
As these hats all have sizeable and styled crowns, they're generally well suited to shorter
men or men with a stockier build.
As they elongate the face, draw the eye upwards, and overall, give a more vertical appearance.
As far as the brim is concerned, remember that this is the feature of the hat that should
most directly correspond to your own specific face shape.
For a refresher on how to pair hats to your face shape, watch our previous video here.
In general, though wider brims typically complement long oval faces whereas narrower brims pair
well with shorter rounder faces and as you may have picked up on earlier, men with strong
and chiseled facial features are lucky in that they can get away with wearing pretty
much any style of these hats.
In terms of pairing these hats with your outfits, you can't go wrong and coupling them with
traditional coat and tie ensembles whether that be a full suit or a combination of sport
coat and odd trousers.
Because of the sporting heritage of trilbies and pork pies, they go well with more rustically
styled outfits especially ones featuring tweed or layered with a sweater.
Color-wise, Brown is a very safe bet for both trilbies and pork pies whereas the more formal
Homburg will typically look best in black or very dark blue.
There are of course other traditional men's hat styles that we didn't cover in today's
video, the top hat or the bowler hat being two primary examples.
The world of menswear is vast but be assured that we will cover these hats and others in
the future so stay tuned.
out of the styles that we covered today, which one do you think that you might be able to
incorporate into your wardrobe first?
Let us know in the comments section below and as always a reminder to subscribe to the
gentleman's Gazette YouTube channel So these videos come straight to your inbox
in today's video I'm wearing a herringbone sport coat it's charcoal gray but also features
elements of black white and even a hint of brown my shirt which is from Charles turret
features a grid pattern of pink and blue on a white background most of the other elements
in my wardrobe today are from Fort Belvedere and we'll start with the tie which is a silk
knit tie in mottled blue and brown the blue of course harmonizes with the blue in my shirt
and the brown is dark enough that it still remains harmonious with most of the other
elements of the outfit as well as bringing out some of those subtle brown tones in the
sport coat the pocket square is a dark blue linen featuring a white hand-rolled ex stitch
and the boutonniere is a light blue Veronica persica my final Fort Belvedere accessories
today are my cuff links which are palladium plated sterling silver and feature lapis lazuli
as the stone you can find all of these Fort Belvedere accessories in our shop here my
trousers are plain black as are my socks and my shoes our cap toe black derbys and of course
today's outfit is topped off by a hat it's a vintage charcoal grey trilby you could also
perhaps call it a stingy brim Fedora since the band is relatively wide and the style
kind of sits between both of these I thought this hat would be a good choice not only because
the color directly corresponds to the color of the sport coat but also given the sporting
heritage of the trilby I thought the Hat would pair well with the thick tweed of the coat
as well as the knit of the tie