The Boss of the Plains was a lightweight all-weather hat designed in 1865 by John B. Stetson for the demands of the American West. It was intended to be durable, waterproof and elegant. [1] This design and the term "Stetson" eventually became all-but-interchangeable with what later became known as the cowboy hat.
The Boss was designed with a high crown to provide insulation on the top of the head, and a wide stiff brim to provide shelter from both sun and precipitation for the face, neck and shoulders. The original fur-felt hat was waterproof and shed rain. Overall, the hat was durable and lightweight. [2] On the underside, the hat included a sweatband, a lining to protect the hat, [3] and, as a memorial to earlier designs, a bow on its sweatband, which had the practical purpose of helping distinguish the front from the back. The original designs were natural in color with four-inch crowns and brims; a plain strap was used for the band. [4]
For years, Stetson worried about the waterproofing, and finally decided to make his hat of beaver felt. [5] It took about 42 beaver belly pelts to produce a high quality hat. [6] One story tells of a cowboy crossing a long dry stretch of prairie. His canteen sprang a leak. He saved the drinking water by carrying it in his Stetson. [7] Stetson featured advertising of a cowboy watering his horse with water carried in the crown. The wearer could also use the brim to direct water to a person's mouth. A high quality hat in good condition was also viewed in some places as a status symbol. [8]
The straight-sided, round cornered, flat brimmed original Boss of the Plains design dominated for about twenty years. [9] Most 19th-century photographs show that the hat doesn't have an intentional crease at all. Most hats were kept open crown. [10] However, through use, abuse, and customization by individual wearers, hats were modified from their original appearance. In particular, the crown would become dented, at first inadvertently, then by deliberate choice of individual owners. The brim was often rolled or curved and ornamentation was sometimes added. Often, these creases and brim shapes began to reflect where a particular hat owner lived or worked, and in some cases, even cowboys on individual ranches could be identified by the crease in their hat. [11]
Thus, the manufactured styles also began to change. The first popular modification was a long crease sloping from the high back down towards the front, called the "Carlsbad crease" after a style used by wearers in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Another design, derived from the pointed top of the Mexican sombrero, worked its way north and became known as the "Montana peak," which had four dents, originally derived from being handled on top with four fingers.
Entertainers who promoted cowboy and western culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries popularized Stetson designs. Buffalo Bill had custom hats with very wide brims made for his Wild West shows, with later designs created for Hollywood including the Tom Mix style "ten-gallon" hats used in Western films.
Over time, the working cowboy hat of the ranch cowboy, as modified by popular entertainers and rodeo competitors, became an essential part of the cowboy image. At times, various politicians, celebrities and law enforcement units adopted descendants of the Boss of the Plains hat to strengthen their association with the culture and values of the Old West. [12] The Boss of the Plains-inspired design that became the modern cowboy hat has retained its basic features in construction and design since the first one in 1865, demonstrating the degree to which form succeeded in following function. [13]
Robert Baden-Powell learned of the practicality of the Boss of the Plains hat through his association with Frederick Russell Burnham during the Second Matabele War of 1896–97, and he popularized the campaign hat or "lemon squeezer" style (i.e. flat brim with four dents at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock) during the Siege of Mafeking in the Second Anglo-Boer War. When Baden-Powell established the South African Constabulary in 1900, he chose the Boss of the Plains as their uniform headgear. Popular culture has it that, on receiving the first shipment of hats from the Stetson company, the handbill identified them as 'hats, B-P style', which was misconstrued as an allusion to Baden-Powell's initials. Baden-Powell later adopted the campaign hat for use by the Boy Scouts.
American author, Laurie Winn Carlson, wrote Boss of the Plains: The Hat That Won the West, which tells the history behind this hat.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of special significance and legend. A subtype, called a wrangler, specifically tends the horses used to work cattle. In addition to ranch work, some cowboys work for or participate in rodeos. Cowgirls, first defined as such in the late 19th century, had a less-well documented historical role, but in the modern world work at identical tasks and have obtained considerable respect for their achievements. Cattle handlers in many other parts of the world, particularly South America and Australia, perform work similar to the cowboy.
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mechanical features, such as visors, spikes, flaps, braces or beer holders shade into the broader category of headgear.
A fedora is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides. Fedoras can also be creased with teardrop crowns, diamond crowns, center dents, and others, and the positioning of pinches can vary. The typical crown height is 4.5 inches (11 cm). The term fedora was in use as early as 1891. Its popularity soared, and eventually it eclipsed the similar-looking homburg.
Stetson is a brand of hat manufactured by the John B. Stetson Company. "Stetson" is also used as a generic trademark to refer to any campaign hat, in particular, in Scouting.
A sombrero is a type of wide-brimmed Mexican men's hat used to shield the face and eyes from the sun. It usually has a high pointed crown, an extra-wide brim that is slightly upturned at the edge, and a chin strap to hold it in place.
John Batterson Stetson was an American hatter, hat manufacturer, and in the 1860s, the inventor of the cowboy hat. He founded the John B. Stetson Company as a manufacturer of headwear. The company's hats are now commonly referred to simply as Stetsons.
The cowboy hat is a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat best known as the defining piece of attire for the North American cowboy. Today it is worn by many people, and is particularly associated with ranch workers in the western and southern United States, western Canada and northern Mexico, with many country, regional Mexican and sertanejo music performers, and with participants in the North American rodeo circuit. It is recognized around the world as part of Old West apparel.
1860s fashion in European and European-influenced countries is characterized by extremely full-skirted women's fashions relying on crinolines and hoops and the emergence of "alternative fashions" under the influence of the Artistic Dress movement.
A homburg is a semi-formal hat of fur felt, characterized by a single dent running down the centre of the crown, a wide silk grosgrain hatband ribbon, a flat brim shaped in a "pencil curl", and a ribbon-bound trim about the edge of the brim. It is traditionally offered in black or grey.
A campaign hat, sometimes called campaign cover, is a broad-brimmed felt or straw hat, with a high crown, pinched symmetrically at the four corners. The campaign hat is occasionally referred to as a Stetson, derived from its origin in the company's Boss of the Plains model in the late 19th century.
Western wear is a category of men's and women's clothing which derives its unique style from the clothes worn in the 19th century Wild West. It ranges from accurate historical reproductions of American frontier clothing, to the stylized garments popularized by Western film and television or singing cowboys such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers in the 1940s and 1950s. It continues to be a fashion choice in the West and Southwestern United States, as well as people associated with country music or Western lifestyles, for example the various Western or Regional Mexican music styles. Western wear typically incorporates one or more of the following, Western shirts with pearl snap fasteners and vaquero design accents, blue jeans, cowboy hat, a leather belt, and cowboy boots.
The Cavalry Stetson is a cavalry traditional headgear within the United States Army, typical worn by cavalrymen in the late 1860s, named after its creator John B. Stetson.
A boonie hat or booney hat is a type of wide-brim sun hat commonly used by military forces in hot tropical climates. Its design is similar to a bucket hat but with a stiffer brim.
The cloche hat or simply cloche is a fitted, bell-shaped hat for women that was invented in 1908 by milliner Caroline Reboux. They were especially popular from about 1922 to 1933. Its name is derived from cloche, the French word for "bell".
The John B. Stetson Company, founded by John B. Stetson in 1865, was the maker of the Stetson cowboy hats, but ceased manufacturing in 1970. Stetson hats are now being manufactured in Garland, Texas, by Hatco, Inc., who also produce Resistol and Charlie 1 Horse hats.
The Chapeau à la Paméla, Pamela hat or Pamela bonnet described a type of straw hat or bonnet popular during the 1790s and into the first three quarters of the 19th century. It was named after the heroine of Samuel Richardson's 1741 novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. While Pamela hats and bonnets underwent a variety of changes in shape and form, they were always made from straw. The mid-19th-century version of the Pamela hat was a smaller version of an early 19th-century wide-brimmed style called the gipsy hat.
The Statue of Robert Baden-Powell is a granite carving of Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, at Baden-Powell House in Queen's Gate, South Kensington, London, England. The statue was created by the English sculptor Don Potter in 1960 and was installed and unveiled in 1961. It now stands in Gilwell Park, the home of Scouting, following the sale of Baden-Powell House in 2021.
The Albert shako was an item of headgear worn in the British Army between 1844 and 1855. It was a development of the Albert hat proposed by Prince Albert in 1843 as a replacement for the bell-top shako then in use. The Albert hat was 7+1⁄10 inches (18 cm) tall, 7⁄10 inch (1.8 cm) taller than the bell-top shako, and had a brim all around rather than just a peak to provide better protection from the sun. The hat included innovative ventilation features.
