Caps & Hats

A hat is an item of clothing which is worn on the head– a kind of headgear. Hats are differentiated from caps by being more elaborate; hats have a high crown, a brim, or both and are larger than caps. more...

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A hat may be either placed on the head or, in the case of some women's hats, secured with hat-pins (which are pushed through the hat and the hair). Many hats are intended only for men or for women, while other hats are fashionable for both sexes. Purveyors of men's hats are called hatters and purveyors of ladies' hats are called milliners.

Physical attributes

Hats are made from a variety of materials, including twill, canvas, leather and straw. Fabric, leather and straw hats are specially constructed to be a certain shape. Most felt, straw, and some fabric hats differ only by cosmetics, determined by how the hat is blocked, or shaped by a mold or by hand. Blocking the hat shapes the crown by applying steam to the material to soften the fabric and, once finished and dried, fix the shape of the hat. If the hat's material is strong enough, it often can be reblocked to another shape. They also come in many sizes.

Felt hats also vary by stiffness, depending on how much shellac is applied to the felt. Additionally, many soft wool felt hats are crushable or packable, meaning that the material can return to and hold its original shape even after being folded and put in a suitcase. Hats that are not explicitly advertised as such should never be folded as they may be permanently damaged. Some straw hats can also rolled up to fit in a tube. Such a rolling practice was done for unblocked Panama hats, resulting in a distinctive crown with a narrow outward lengthwise crease.

Due to the round stiff nature of most hats, special hat boxes were created to store them when not in use. They are simple cylindrical cardboard boxes with a fitted lid and are often covered in colored printed paper. Several hats may be stacked upon each other if they are of similar sizes and styles. It is important to support the hat by the sweatband to prevent distortion of the brim by either stuffing the crown with tissue paper or using something to approximate a head.

A hat may also have a "snap" brim. In this case, the brim is constructed so that the front or back can be turned up or down or in alternate directions and hold this shape. Some hats may also feature a wire in the edge of the brim so that the wearer may shape the brim in any way possible.

Hat Sizes

When a hat is made, it is also blocked to a certain hat size. Generally, less expensive hats will be a named size such as small, medium, large, and extra large. Finer hats are more strictly fitted to a person's head and have a numerical size.

Metric hat sizes are simply the distance around the persons head measured in centimeters, usually rounded up to the next centimeter if the measurement falls between the centimeter marks.

Read more at Wikipedia.org