If you haven’t noticed yet, I love hats! All kinds of wild and wonderful hats throughout history, so much so that I wrote a 5,000+ word Patreon post about the topic and a related Snark Week post about hats. I also frequently use the tags hats aren’t just for losers, caps aren’t just for suckers, and what the hell is on their heads to express my indignation at (and sometimes praise for) how frock flicks deal with the issue of headgear.
So that begs the question, are there any historical costume movies or TV shows that have good hats? Can frock flicks display headgear that’s accurate to their time period and social class? Actually, yes, it does happen! Which makes you wonder why it’s not done more often, of course…
I’m going to just point out five productions that I find are solid examples of historical hats. These movies or TV shows feature hats and caps and headgear that’s relevant for the majority of the characters — not just the extras and not just in one main scene. While everyone remembers, say, one big fabulous hat in Titanic (1997) and My Fair Lady (1964), the headgear isn’t super consistently worn by other characters.
Let’s go chronologically by costume era…
The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)
Look no farther for an excellent primer on Tudor headgear than this classic miniseries. We see the full range, from gable hoods to French hoods, plus a couple German styles, and men’s Tudor bonnets. Most of the hats are worn by the nobility and are appropriately blinged up, though there’s a few simpler fashions worn by servants. Not everything is perfect — one of Anne Bolyen’s hoods looks more like a headband — but there’s so much done right in this show that I give those bits a pass.
The Affair of the Necklace (2001)
We’ve mentioned the hat porn of this movie before, and while Jefferson in Paris (1995) comes close, I think Necklace has a bit more variety in men’s hats, so I chose it for balance. Maybe Adrien Brody just wears a hat better, IDK! Still, both flicks show upper-class 18th-c. women in giant floofly caps, which you see tons of in period fashion plates. There’s also such a great variety of hat styles, materials, and trimmings, again, all documentable to historical sources.
Emma (2020)
Jane Austen and Regency frock flicks always have bonnets, right? OK other than Bridgerton (2020-), lol. But bonnets don’t have to be dull to be historically accurate, and Regency hats don’t always have to be bonnets either. I love how this latest adaption of Emma looked to the breadth of 1810s headgear, particularly for the wealthy heroine, but also to show distinctions between her and the various characters. Naïve Harriet gets plainer hats (until Emma’s glow-up), elegant Miss Fairfax gets restrained headgear, while babbling Miss Bates gets old-fashioned caps and bonnets making her look older than her age. Plus, the men’s hats are as tall as they should be in this period.
Howards End (1992)
You expect historically accurate costumes from a Merchant-Ivory film, from the skin out and from head to toe. So I had to choose one of their classics, and I picked this one both for the stand-out memorable hats and for the fully realized scenes where people of every class have perfectly amazing headgear. The backgrounds are as excellent to look at as the main and supporting characters.
Downton Abbey (2010-15)
With a five seasons and spanning the 1910s through the 1920s, there’s oodles of opportunities for good hats in this series and they didn’t waste it. While there were certainly plenty of indoor / no-hat-needed scenes, folks in Downton did wear hats when it was proper to do so. Even the servants got chances to wear something other than maid’s caps when they had outings and ran errands. The sheer number of hats this series included requires that I include it in this hat top five!
What frock flicks do you look to for historically accurate headgear?
Wings of the Dove has some really stunning Edwardian hats!
Kingdom, aka medieval Korean zombies, has excellent hat game, setting and costumes look great in general and the hats are key.
The Music Man had amazing headgear.
Great post! I have no idea if they’re accurate or not, but I always think of Mina’s and Dracula’s hats in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (As one of my all-time favorites, I never really need a reason to think of that movie, but since you asked us to think about hats…)
The Draughtsman’s Contract
My Fair Lady
Barry Lyndon
Brazil
and for the best derpy bonnets
Little Dorrit (1987)… good top hats too
Death in Venice is the only answer for me. I’ve never seen a film MORE comprehensively upstaged by its millinery. Beautiful looking film, but every time a hat came onto screen, it was like Dirk Bogarde et al were bundled off screen in a hurricane of feathers, flowers and stabby hatpins, and the hats just virtually went “LOOK AT US, LOOK AT OUR MAGNIFICOLUGUENCE, WE ARE THE STARS HERE.”
To be fair, I was kinda bored by the film itself, but every time a hat swanned onto the screen and started chewing the scenery simply through sheer power of gorgeous existence, it suddenly got interesting.
If you like hats, then the opening scene of season two of The Gilded Age is up your alley.