History of Flat Caps

Old Style Flat Cap

The history of the flat cap is pretty interesting and it goes back to the fourteenth century when it was most popularly worn in Britain and in Ireland. Probably the flat caps came to be made following the style and idea of the French Bonnets. It was in the year 1571, that an act of the Parliament of Britain declared that every male above the age of six will have to wear woolen caps on Sundays and other holidays and the only exception was for nobility and the people of degree. The bill was passed to increase the consumption of wool and for trading purposes. This was not repealed until the year 1597 but by this time the flat cap had already become an essential part of men’s clothing in the country. Back then the flat cap denoted a person as a tradesman or an apprentice and during the nineteenth century it was universally worn by the entire working class of Britain and Ireland.

It was during this time that the flat caps began to be made out of fabric and material other than just wool. Even the upper-class Englishmen started wearing the finer versions of these flat caps and soon they also came to be known as ‘golf caps’. Young men of the 1920s began wearing cloth made flat caps considering them to be fashionable. There was a time when the flat caps marked the ‘working class’ but actually even the landed gentry wore these caps as protection from the sun and rain while shooting or traveling to the countryside. Even today the flat caps are popular in the fashion world and are worn by both men and women of all ages.