Pork pie hat
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A pork pie hat or porkpie hat is type of felt hat (although they have also been made of straw).
Originating in the mid 19th century it is similar to a Trilby or a fedora, but with a flat top. Originally the term referred to a type of woman's hat.[1] The crown is short, and has an indent all the way around, instead of the pinch crown typically seen on fedoras and Homburgs. It gets its name from its resemblance to a pork pie.
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". The pork pie hat was a staple of the British man-about-town for many years, before its association with any particular youth subculture. In Jamaica, they were popularized by the 1960s rude boy subculture, which travelled to the United Kingdom and influenced the skinhead scene.
Silent film comedian Buster Keaton often wore pork pie hats, as did physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The May 1948 (Vol. 1 No. 1) issue of Physics Today showed a pork pie hat laid on some physics equipment. Most physicists knew this was a reference to Oppenheimer.
The pork pie hat was prevalent in New Guinea in January 1944, when Australian troops had just defeated a Japanese stronghold at Kankiryo Saddle. The following is from Australia in the War of 1939—1945 Series 1—Army Volume VI—The New Guinea Offensives (1st Edition 1961) p.766:
According to the historian of the 2/10th Battalion, when word was received that General Vasey would visit the area on the 2nd, a signal was sent to all companies: "Other ranks will cease calling officers by their Christian names and will cease wearing pork-pie hats."
