top hats

  • hats,  paintings,  portraits,  top hats

    Alfred-Philippe Roll, Portrait of Adolphe Alphand the civil engineer who remodelled Paris under Baron Hausmann. We may marvel at the wide Boulevards he created today, but the real reason for them wasn’t aesthetic, it was to quell rebellion quickly such as the 1871 Paris Commune.

    Mass control of people through road planning – you could position artilery at one of the radiating junctions and control miles of streets – and march armies down them rather than the small guerilla-friendly streets that helped the 1848 Commune.

  • kilts,  top hats,  Uncategorised,  victorian,  victorians

    You see I don’t just blog about such bearded Victorian topper wearing blokes or kilts…

    …I wear it too.

    Here I am in an early 1900 evening suit, Lindsay tartan waistcoat, silk dickie bow, and topper at a friend’s wedding. The only out of place thing is the shoes, which are CATs – need to get some proper Oxford brogues. And a silk topper if I can afford one!

  • top hats,  Uncategorised

    yeoldefashion:

    Top hats were a fashion must for all respectable gentlemen for a good portion of the 19th century. However the felted beaver fur that was traditionally used in construction proved just slightly too hot for the summer months.

    The solution was the introduction of straw top hots for summer wear. In the very early 19th century some were even painted black to resemble their winter counterparts as closely as possible, but eventually leaving the straw its natural color became the style of choice. This one is American in origin and dates to 1832.

    To quote Wayne: ‘I did not know that!’

    By the way as an aside, top hats were only beaver fur for early part of the 1800s, silk plush became the popular shiny alternative after the 1850/60s which I expect being silk was also less hot than fur felt. Seems to be some confusion about this over at eBay – hence the rather strange epiphets ‘beaver silk" and ‘silk beaver’ – how does a beaver spin silk exactly?!? :-p And silk beaver sounds like you should get it in a plain wrapper in Soho…

  • Edwardian,  painters,  paintings,  top hats,  Uncategorised,  victorian,  victorians

    Is it me or do they always seem to get the top hats slightly wrong in these period things? Just looks wrong compared to pictures or paintings from this era (regency) and equally true of modern depictions of Victorian/Edwardian too.

    It’s like those goth/dressage versions of the top hat, or people wearing stovepipes to be ‘authentically Victorian’ which were never that popular but for a very short time…or people who wear mourning felt hats to weddings (although that in part is because the story goes French brothers in Lyon who made the last of the silk plush fell out imany years ago and dramatically smashed the silk looms – hence no new silk toppers* -so rather expensive and hard to find a proper silk one)

    Sorry, top hat rant over.

    * although since writing this I found one place which is now doing new silk plush hats…so someone must be doing silk plush again…

    vintagedudes:

    Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice.