Читать книгу We’re British, Innit: An Irreverent A to Z of All Things British - Iain Aitch - Страница 23

For around 100 years from its invention in 1850, the bowler was the dominant British hat, transcending class headwear rules and leaving an enduring image of the Brit as bowler- hatted. The hard felt hat was designed by James and George Lock and manufactured by the Bowler family milliners for the Earl of Leicester. The Bowler was initially used as a riding hat, though it soon became popular with bankers and civil servants, offering a halfway house between the top hat and the flat cap. The Bowler was later adopted by some manual workers, who prized its protective raised dome. It has largely fallen out of fashion now, though it did enjoy a resurgence in the late 1960s, thanks to the film A Clockwork Orange. This brief revival was most confusing, as you couldn’t tell who was a slightly eccentric outmoded banker and who was a psychotic film fanatic bent on a bit of the old ultraviolence.