The Top Hat

No garment announced Victorian respectability like the top hat. Tall, straight-sided and black, it was the obligatory crown of the frock coat, worn to church, to business, to weddings and to the races. Early in the century the finest hats were made of beaver under-fur felt; later, glossy silk plush stretched over a stiff frame became the standard, giving the hat its mirror-like sheen.

The hat came in dialects. The stovepipe, with its straight sides and flat crown, was the classic form; the collapsible opera hat — the gibus, or chapeau claque — folded flat on a spring mechanism so a gentleman could stow it under his seat at the theatre and spring it open with a flick. Height rose and fell with fashion, and a hat a fraction too tall or too short dated its wearer instantly.

Making hats was dangerous work: mercury was used in felting the fur, and the trembling, addled hatters of the trade are often linked to the phrase 'mad as a hatter'. By the end of the century the topper was retreating from daily life toward ceremony — weddings, Ascot, funerals — but within Victoria's reign no middle-class man would have been seen bareheaded in the street.