New Cocked hat with ribbon

the hawken shop
L & R
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longhunter 1776 said:
there were fancy hats like that back then,,so why the gay remark?/ it was what the person had got ,, he liked it and wore it gay or not it was his hat!!!
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I have searched many images, contemporary oil paintings that include hat wearers, portraits, museum specimens, etc., but I have not found a case of a cocked red hat. I have found many red hats of different styles from the period, but no red cocked hats. While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there is nothing to say that some dandy somewhere didn't wear a red cocked hat, the available evidence indicates that black, grey, brown, and buff colors prevailed.

But I still like the hat.
 
CEvonk said:
This one is actually a gift for a lady who plays clawhammer banjo.
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The hat shows your skills and imagination and I think it looks fine. I was about to post it might be acceptable for a fop or dandy but wouldn't go over well in a rural setting. I was also about to say that with a plume it would be an ideal hat for a stylish lady.
 
CEvonk said:
I have searched many images, contemporary oil paintings that include hat wearers, portraits, museum specimens, etc., but I have not found a case of a cocked red hat. I have found many red hats of different styles from the period, but no red cocked hats. While absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there is nothing to say that some dandy somewhere didn't wear a red cocked hat, the available evidence indicates that black, grey, brown, and buff colors prevailed.

But I still like the hat.
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Actually, they were all black. Anything else resulted from fading and weather.
 
Tumbledown said:
Actually, they were all black. Anything else resulted from fading and weather.
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Interesting. I'm not certain about absolutes of style over the time period from, say the late 17th to the end of the 18th century. And there were may have been regional differences in regard to "acceptable" styles. Certainly there would have been class differences in the approach to style, although perhaps that entailed more conformity among the rich, with quality and trim rather than individuality being indicative of status, and more necessity driven choice among everyone else, with availability, affordability, and fitness for purpose driving hat selection rather than conformity with style. It would be an interesting sociological investigation with lots of confounding elements.

The National Archives offers this information.

Black, grey, and “tobacco,” or tan, were popular choices for the hat’s body color.​

https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/08/18/hats-off-to-the-tri-corner-hat/

Geo. Franks, Hatter claims to make period accurate hats, and offers some of his reproductions in colors other than black (but no red hats.)

https://cockedhats.com/products/bound-ramillies-style-fur-felt-cocked-hat

https://cockedhats.com/products/bound-wool-felt-cocked-hat-with-liner-no-cockade

This page cites a fashion history book, Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear Through the Ages, by Sara Pendergast, Tom Pendergast, and Drew D. Johnson, editors, as saying, "Generally dark in color, tricornes were often edged with a gold braided trim after about 1675." (I'm not sure about their use of the term "tricorne.")

https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/tricorne-hat/

This forum's own .54 ball had this to say on the subject nearly 10 years ago:
Now there are paintings of Brown, Tan, green, grey and white. These are rare and seem to match an outfit. Some of these images appear to be everyday folk but most appear to be wealthy. Sometimes these are from the Empire/Regency/Federal period when a Major Fashion change occurred.​
​
In closing, there is evidence for other colors besides black and that's fine; I have a brown one, but I think if one is serious about the 18th and early 18th Century, you need to have a black Sunday go to meeting/militia/business hat.​
​
https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/threads/tricorn-hat-color.94107/

I have looked at a lot of 18th century contemporary paintings lately, and I can't find one red hat.

I did find this, but it's a modern work.

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/homme-au-chapeau-rouge-22033
 
simonbeans said:
Scarlet Pimpernel
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2c93272fb43ad4f406d3b34dd47f31b0.jpg
 
Geo. Franks makes hats, yes, but not necessarily historically correct hats. Like many, he's making what sells.

From the early 1700s until after the Revolutionary War, hats were black. There were other colors before and after that period. (When speaking of tricorns/cocked hats, this is the period that most often comes to mind.)

M. Brenckle, who has made hats for museums, says this:
Some notes on hat color in the 18th century. Hardly a week goes by without someone asking me about the color range of hats available in the Revolutionary War period. For most times and places, the choice of hat color was like Ford’s Model T- you could have any color you wanted so long as it was black. There were a few exceptions, which I’ll detail below, but for most men in Anglo-American contexts, black hats were the norm. Hatters of the period dyed their hats with a combination of logwood, copperas, and verdigris. The hat bodies were boiled in the dye at least twice and sometimes as many as four or five times for the better sort of hats. Logwood is an unstable dyestuff, however, and hats frequently turned a sort of rusty color (sometimes with a greenish cast) after prolonged exposure to sunlight. Indeed, many original surviving hats today have a brownish tinge to them. People have mistakenly guessed that these hats were brown originally, but this is likely not the case. At the same time, period hats were stiffened with glue or gum Senegal (or gum Arabic), which tended to migrate to the hat’s surface as it aged, and produced whitish splotches.
White hats were occasionally worn by men in hot climates (or as summer wear in more northerly locations). They appear in images of the West Indies, and occasionally in descriptions of runaways in the American south. For the most part, however, only women and boys wore white hats. These were usually made of white rabbit fur, and given a nap.
Not until the early 19th century did brown, drab, and white hats become commonplace for men’s daywear.
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M. Brenckle, Hatter on Facebook
 
This is an interesting account from about 115 years after the end of the era of cocked hats. It describes the hat colors available, and indicates that red was a color in circulation:

Picturesqueness of costume went out with chivalry and few things could be uglier than an Englishman of James II or William and Mary's days except an Englishman of the modern tight and buttoned period About the middle of the last century cocked hats wigs and cloaks of every variety of color not excepting red were worn Sometimes the cape and collar were of velvet and of a different color from the coat In winter round coats made stiff with buckram and coming down to the knees in front were worn Boys wore wigs and cocked hats until about 1790 Powder was in use among gentlemen even later Ebenezer Fox thus describes​
​
-- from Volume IV of the Documents of the City of Boston in the Year 1905 in Four Volumes​

https://books.google.com/books?id=T...at color were cocked hats google docs&f=false

One of many pieces I stumbled across that discusses the evolution of the military cocked hat, but nothing about civilian colors.

https://www.google.com/books/editio...=1&dq=cocked+hat&pg=PA389&printsec=frontcover

And here is a reference to red and colored cocked hats:

1708270374286.png


https://www.google.com/books/editio...v=1&dq=cocked hat&pg=PT68&printsec=frontcover

There is certainly some evidence for hats being colors other than black, even including the color red! It would be great to have more time for research, but the utility of the subject relative to other projects is fairly low.
 
Two thoughts...
First, That hat is awesome! Kudos for creativity and craftsmanship.
Second, I strongly suspect that if one of our ancestors showed up and saw all of us in costume, they would probably wonder why everyone is dressed alike.
 

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