‘A welcome addition to writings that engage new notions in the history of ideas ... This enlightening and cogent volume reveals that author Drake Stutesman is much more than a clothing aficionado. Hat: Origins, Language, Style is a multi-discipline, cross-cultural study of what probably is the oldest known wearable object. It incorporates scholarly research, imaginative literary and visual insights, and historical curiosity focused on variations and diverse meanings surrounding the hat . . . for readers seeking stimulating intellectual and humanistic insights.’
— Beverly Chico, Dress
“An excellent anthropological and sociological world-wide study of the importance and significance of hats from the beginning of time to the present day.”
— Christina Giorcelli, Professor Emeritus of American Literature at the University of Rome Three
HAT
ORIGINS,LANGUAGE, STYLE
Drake Stutesman, Reaktion Books 2019
"elegant, deeply-researched and always interesting ... wide-reaching in its scope, admirably concise ... Stutesman’s narrative covers millennia, exploring the origins, manufacture, and language of hats, ending with hats today as works of art and milliners as celebrities."
— Fashion Theory
"The range and interpretation are fabulous. I learnt a lot."
— Ulinka Rublack, Author of Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe
“skillful and pithy ... Hat shows just how important the hat has been, economically, culturally and aesthetically, to us since prehistory . . . Hat is an engrossing story, full of curiosities . . . Stutesman places the hat at the centre of a fascinating account of consumerism and gender struggle. Chapeau!”
— Nick Sharp, Royal Academy of Art, London, World of Interiors
Symbolic, comical, transformative: the hat, in its many forms, means a great deal to a great many
Hat: Origins, Language, Style explores our enduring passion for hats, from the Ice Age to today.
Enchanted hats, in worldwide folklore, are transformers. They change people into beings who extend, suddenly, beyond
their everyday selves. The magic hat gives the wearer powers to fly and be invisible, usher a person into secret worlds,
exposes mysteries, grants impossible wishes and snatches the wearer from danger. But the ordinary hat also transforms
– the crown initiates the leader; the turban embodies faith; the gang hat forms affiliation. And yet, though marking crucial elements of any society, the hat is also intensely personal.
Appearing at least 30,000 years ago, possibly representing the new developments of human culture, and the beginnings of conceptual thinking, the hat has had a wild ride though history. With a focus on Western commerce and its onset in the Middle Ages, Hat: Origins, Language, Style looks at the complexities of the long labor history. The world of hat-making, and its divide between the female milliners and the male hatters, moves from the handmade to the industrial and its story is as electric with genius, revolution and stardom as it is poisoned with illness, slavery and prejudice. Milliners, in particular, through years of difficulty and slander, rose to become the orchestrators of one of the 20th century’s great economies, as well as superstars of that era. Millinery also was the foundation of the some of the most iconic couturiers who shaped fashion – Coco Chanel, Halston, Charles James and Jean Lanvin all began as milliners.
The 21st century has carried on this inventive and fabulous world of hats with new millinery superstars such as Philip Treacy, Stephen Jones, Nick Fouquet, Maiko Takeda and Muriel Nisse. And hats continue to carry deep messages for our cultures,
be it the way we wear them – perhaps to the side or tilted forward – or how we respond to their multiple codes. Hats are always fresh to us and have never lost their phenomenal resonance.
“I am so impressed…this new book is different and most stimulating -
it makes me re-think a great deal.”
— Claire Hughes, Hats (Bloomsbury, 2018)
“…a captivating exploration
of headwear.”
— C.E. Berg, Museum of History and Industry, Choice
“Professor Stutesman
on the whole: chapeau!
Or, in English,
I take my hat off to you!”
— Stephen Bayley, The Spectator
FEATURED IN:
BOOK OF THE MONTH Reaktion Books, November, 2019
NATURAL HISTORY December 2019/January 2020
cover story, Headdress
LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY December 23, 2019
The Strange Properties and Histories of the Magic Hat: On Wishing hats, Top Hats, the Helm of Death, and other Mystical Headwear.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/strange-properties-and-histories-magic-hat