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When was the term "Fedora" first used for that sort of hat?

Pat_H

A-List Customer
Messages
442
Location
Wyoming
I know that the name "Fedora" comes from an Italian play or something, but when was it first used to refer to the hat we all know and love?

I ask as I'm looking at a photo of a crowd in Cheyenne Wyoming in January 1915, and one of the people in it is very clearly wearing a Fedora. I just wondered when they started being called that?
 

Sam Craig

One Too Many
Messages
1,356
Location
Great Bend, Kansas
Fedora McDougal coined the name after he fashioned the first felt hat in Scotland during the fourth century.
It had a slightly wider brim than today's version ... even a little wider than the Raiders' fedora ... at least that is how it appears in the fifth century history, which was illustrated by monks in the Stetson Abby

Hey, that's what I was told

Sam
 

danofarlington

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,122
Location
Arlington, Virginia
Fedora McDougal coined the name after he fashioned the first felt hat in Scotland during the fourth century.
It had a slightly wider brim than today's version ... even a little wider than the Raiders' fedora ... at least that is how it appears in the fifth century history, which was illustrated by monks in the Stetson Abby

Hey, that's what I was told

Sam

At least, that's the Wackipedia version.
:)
 

rlk

I'll Lock Up
Messages
6,100
Location
Evanston, IL
Short answer:
1882 for a hat style which may or may not match your idea of a Fedora.
From a French Play about a Russian.
 
Last edited:

Richard Warren

Practically Family
Messages
682
Location
Bay City
I read something somewhere that convinced me that the word "Fedora" was used to describe not the hat worn by Bernhardt but the hat worn by Robert Mantell, the leading man in a previous American production of the play featuring Fanny Davenport in 1883. Makes me feel better than thinking I am wearing a woman's hat.
 

danofarlington

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,122
Location
Arlington, Virginia
I read something somewhere that convinced me that the word "Fedora" was used to describe not the hat worn by Bernhardt but the hat worn by Robert Mantell, the leading man in a previous American production of the play featuring Fanny Davenport in 1883. Makes me feel better than thinking I am wearing a woman's hat.

But from her pictures in the hat that I've seen on this forum, it was definitely a man's hat that she was appropriating. It looked like an Alpine hat.
 

Pat_H

A-List Customer
Messages
442
Location
Wyoming
Thanks for all the great replies.

I thought of this again as I noted what appears to be a fairly modern looking hat in this photo, taken five years after the photograph I noted above.

800px-Cairo_gang.jpg


No. 4 in this photo, taken some time in 1920, or perhaps a little earlier, has a Fedora creased in the familiar manner, much as the 1915 photograph I noted above did. This photo is of the Cairo Gang, which featured prominently in the story of Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920.
 

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