Make a Hat Day

What the day is

Make a Hat Day is observed on September 15. The material itself is covered on the Felt Hat Day entry that shares this date; this one is about construction.

Origin and background

A tailored garment is cut flat and sewn into a shape. A traditional hat is not. It starts as a shapeless cone or hood of felt or straw, which is softened with steam until the fibers will move against one another, pulled down over a carved wooden block, and pinned and corded tight while it dries. It comes off the block holding that shape permanently, and the block can be used again indefinitely.

This is why a milliner's workroom is full of wooden heads and why blocks are valuable. The shape lives in the block rather than in any pattern, and a crown block and a brim block together define a style. Complicated crowns need blocks made in pieces that can be taken apart inside the finished hat, because the shape is wider than the opening it has to come out of.

The parts have names worth knowing. The crown covers the head, the brim projects from it, and the sweatband inside is the piece that actually determines fit and takes the wear. Hats are sized by the circumference of the head just above the ears, which is why hat sizing survives as a real measurement while most clothing sizing has drifted into fiction.

One story deserves correcting. It is often said that a particular president killed the hat by going bare-headed to his inauguration. He did in fact wear one that day, and the decline in hat wearing was already decades old by then, driven by cars with low roofs, central heating, and changing hairstyles.

How to take part

• Measure your head properly before buying anything.
• Try steam on a misshapen hat. Most can be persuaded back.
• Store a hat upside down on its crown, or on a block, never on the brim.
• Visit a milliner if your town still has one, and look at the blocks.