This Week’s Extras

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Last Sunday, Princess Hisako attended a baseball tournament for school children in Tokyo in a large hat with wide black brim and white pork pie-style indented crown
Also last Sunday, Queen Elizabeth repeated her pale blue straw cloche with sloped crown, silk hatband and handmade feather flower by Rachel Trevor Morgan to attend Sunday Service at Crathie Kirk near Balmoral Castle. The Countess of Wessex repeated a navy felt Jane Taylor trilby and the Duchess of Cornwall repeated her natural ecru straw capulet hat.

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Princess Hisako departed Tokyo for an 11-day visit to Canada in a prim white bowler with side bow.
Princess Nobuko in a cream pyramid saucer hat trimmed with a prim white-piped navy bow to open an exhibition today in Tokyo
Brace yourselves, dear readers- there were a lot of new millinery designs caught my eye this week:
Navy straw hat trimmed with multi-coloured thread by British brand NDLQ Millinery
Wonderful cream and deep coral teardrop hat with bow topped ruffle by British milliner Rae Oakley
Unexpected spiky hatband on this black straw and felt design by Dutch milliner Nienke Visser
Pink button percher with wonderful deep pink leather dahlias by Australian brand Maker Millinery
Striking headpiece of overlapping sinamay diamonds by British brand Rebecca Couture Millinery
Red straw bonnet with silk flower made by Australian milliner Lauren Ritchie for a theatre production
Lush and luxe headpiece of handmade royal purple silk flowers and gold feathers by Rachel Trevor Morgan
Creative cerulean blue straw calot with peacock feather trim by Belgian milliner Amélie D’Hooghvorst
Winter white felt button percher with soaring and sparkling black twist trim by British milliner Vivian Sheriff
Bonkers but beautiful hat with many-layered orange crin brim by British milliner Stephen Jones
Cobalt felt cloche with teal felt appliqued peacock by German milliner Angelika Löbering
Two stunning designs by Australian milliner Souri Sengdara under label Velvet and Tonic: a perfectly
proportioned scarlet braided velvet bandeau and a sculptural teal straw pillbox with ivory pleated fan wrap
And from Australian milliner Jill Humphries who works until the Jill and Jack Millinery label, this breathtaking halo headpiece in gold jinsin with cut gold feathers. Simplicity without any compromise of beauty.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1ahLZEHynP/

India Hicks has launched a new podcast that captures fantastic stories told by her mother, Pamela Hicks. They are filled with interesting royal tidbits and worth a listen.
Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko are on a trip to Bhutan and, for the first time, have brought Prince Hisahito along with them. Visits with the Bhutan king, queen and crown prince yielded some lovely photos, especially ones of the young boys together and Prince Hisahito trying out archery, Bhutan’s national sport


Photos from social media as indicated

Largest Bow?

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Last summer, we identified the largest bow trimming one of Queen Elizabeth’s hats. I know there are larger bows out there (i.e. larger than the head size of the person wearing it!) in the wider canon of royal hats so this week’s discussion question is: Which royal hat or headpiece contains the largest bow?

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Photo from Getty as indicated 

Royal Men’s Hats: Fedoras and Trilbys

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I’m so pleased to pass the reins of Royal Hats over to longtime reader and regular commenter Jake for the second installment of a 4-part series on millinery worn by royal men. You can catch Jake and his many stylish hats on Instgram or Twitter @bestdressedmenno. 

“Fedora” can be a catchall word that can describe many variations of this type of hat. Fedoras can have small and large brims, center dent crowns or teardrop crowns, upturned and downturned brims, hatbands and feathers or none at all! Fedoras can look polished traditional, weathered, and even outback-esque (think Indiana Jones); they can be made from various straw materials (such as panama straw/toquilla palm, shantung straw, toyo, raffia, sisal, and paper straw), wool or fur felts, cotton and linen, leather, and even synthetic materials. One can wear a fedora with jeans and a T-shirt, a suit, and everything in between. Worn by any gender or age, fedoras are probably the most versatile hat today.

While homburgs and bowlers were more common daytime hats for most royal men in the first half of 20th Century, the fedora sometimes was photographed on royal heads.

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King Alfonso XIII of Spain and  Emperor Akihito when he was a young crown prince

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King George VI (as a young Duke of York) and Prince Nicholas of Greece & Denmark
(far right, father of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent)

In more recent years, saw the Duke of Edinburgh wear numerous straw designs and since the Duke’s retirement, King Carl XVI Gustaf has taken the leading role with his fedoras.

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Otherwise, it’s rare to find a fedora on any of their colleagues. A couple exceptions include the Earl of Wessex, who owns a wide brim panama fedora, and Mike Tindall, who has worn trilbies occasionally, but usually at casual outings (a bit more on trilbies below).

I have some suggestions of fedoras and the royal men who could wear them. A teardrop-shaped crown fedora often looks good on those with squarer faces (like me!), so I think King Willem-Alexander, Prince Carl Philip, Prince Harry, Prince Daniel of Sweden, Prince Charles, and Crown Prince Haakon could all pull off this style quite well.

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A general fedora (often with a center dent crown shape) could be worn by others, such as King Felipe (taking a cue from his sister the Infanta Elena), Crown Prince Frederik (whose father wore many styles of hats), Emperor Naruhito, King Philippe (as Crown Prince), and Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume, but virtually any royal man could pull off a fedora in my opinion. The Danish royals, like Prince Joachim and his sons, could support Danish hatmaker Hornskov hats (not an official or paid endorsement, just a suggestion!). Even African royalty have occasionally donned fedoras, such as King Letsie III of Lesotho.

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Finally, there is also the trilby, which is a sibling of the fedora. A trilby is quite similar overall to a fedora, except it has a much smaller (stingy!) brim that curls up around the back. As previously stated, Mike Tindall wears this shape well.

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Some of the younger royals (such as Frederik & Mary’s sons, or Viscount Severn) could wear a trilby as a transitional hat. I also think Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg would look good in a trilby. Even Prince Michael of Kent could rock one again, as he did so when he was younger.

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What do you think about the fedora and trilby? Who would you like to see in these styles? Are there photos I missed of royal men in fedoras?

Thanks for another interesting post, Jake! Readers can jump over to this post for more information on this history and characteristics of a fedora, or this post for the same on a trilby.

Photos from Getty as indicated

Guest Post: Men’s Hats

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Longtime reader and regular commenter Jake, who lives in Washington DC and can be found on Instgram or Twitter @bestdressedmenno, entertained us last summer with his stylist-eye picks for hats from the wardrobes of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Maxima (part 1 and part 2) he’d like to see repeated. This week, he joins us for the first half of a 4-part series on a genre of royal hats that, unfortunately, has nearly disappeared. I’m so pleased to welcome Jake back to Royal Hats!

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a hat fanatic and that I have a sizable collection I wear. It’s been good to see more formal hats make a comeback in the past 10-15 years here in the U.S., and I’ve been happy to be a part of that comeback (I like to think I was an early adoptee haha!).

Unfortunately, most royal men we see seldomly wear a hat. Even Charles, the Prince of Wales, who is often on best-dressed lists, rarely dons a hat beyond Ascot and military events. The royal men most likely to sport a hat today would be King Carl XVI Gustaf, the Earl of Wessex, Mike Tindall, and before his retirement, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The hat styles we usually see are a military uniform cap, top hat, knit beanie/skullcap, or ballcap, meaning either extremely formal or quite casual. Certainly there have been some appearances of a fedora, trilby, flat cap, or bowler, but these have been irregular, to say the least.

Therefore, I’ve decided to take a look at some more “every day” hat styles and throw some suggestions out into the universe as to which royal men should try these styles, hoping they will catch on. Upcoming posts will focus on fedoras, caps, and a roundup of miscellaneous styles. 

To get us started, here are some flashback photos of royal men in hats that could still be worn today:

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Albert, Duke of York; Emperor Hirohito; Crown Prince Olav of Norway; Lord Louis Mountbatten wheeling the future Edward VIII; Prince Andrew of Greece (father of the Duke of Edinburgh)

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Prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma (husband of Grand Duchess Charlotte); King Bhumibol and King Gustaf VI; George, Duke of Kent and Edward, Prince of Wales; King Alfonso XIII; Albert, Duke of York

Finally, as one of the most fun finds in my research for these posts, here are a few photos of (then) Crown Prince Akihito shopping for hats at Lock & Co. Hatters in London in 1953:

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What kind of hats would you like to see worn by royal men? Which royal men do you hope add some hats to their closets in the future?

Thanks so much, Jake, for this introduction and look back at some wonderful hats. The shots of young Akihito at Lock & Co. are simply marvelous! Stay tuned tomorrow, everyone, for the second post in this series.  It’s going to be a fedora frenzy!