Pork pie hat

Pork pie hat

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Pork pie hat

Jazz musician Marcus Miller wearing a pork pie

A pork pie hat or porkpie hat is a type of hat made of felt or, less commonly, straw. It is somewhat similar to a Trilby or a fedora, but with a flat top. The crown is short and has an indentation all the way around, instead of the pinch crown typically seen on Fedoras and homburgs. The pork pie hat originated in the mid 19th century. Originally referring to a type of woman's hat, it gets its name from its resemblance to a pork pie. ^[1]

The pork pie hat was a staple of the British man-about-town style for many years. Pork pie hats are often associated with jazz, blues and ska musicians and fans. Charles Mingus wrote an elegy for jazz saxophone great Lester Young called "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat". In Jamaica, the hat was popularized by the 1960s rude boy subculture, which traveled to the United Kingdom and influenced the mod and skinhead subcultures (although Jamaican and British pork pie hats are more similar to a very short-brimmed Trilby rather than the US style). Jamaican ska artist Laurel Aitken performed the song "Give Me Back My Pork Pie Hat."

Actor Buster Keaton made thousands of pork pie hats for personal use in his films^[2]

Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb frequently wore a pork pie hat. Singer Dean Martin was known to be partial to pork pie hats, and they became a trademark of the silent film comedian Buster Keaton who handmade his own. The hat was prevalent in New Guinea in January 1944, when Australian troops had just defeated a Japanese stronghold at Kankiryo Saddle.^[3]

In the cartoon Pinky and The Brain (Warner Bros., 1995-1998) three-part episode Brainwashed (1998), The Brain is named "Pork Pie" after the hat he is wearing in The Land of Hats.

The pork pie hat had a resurgence in popularity after Gene Hackman's character Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle wore one in The French Connection, a film released in 1971.