Sometimes called Skimmer Hat, Basher, or Straw Sailor Hat, the Panama Straw Boater Hat-- once a popular commodity denoting superiority in its highest peak from 1880-1930-- has disappeared into the void of nineteenth-century vintage photography. As early as 1822, the classic boater was a fashionable men's formal summer hat, worn by politicians and stylish men alike after the beginning of the last century, later acting as a signifier of social status as years went by. Originating in the Bedfordshire town of Luton, different manufacturers offered as many as forty-eight styles to their customers. Prominent in Vaudeville and Burlesque, boaters were worn by privileged men as casual summer headgear in the late 19th century and early 20th century, most specifically worn when boating or sailing, as the name suggests. Typically made from high-quality stiff sennit straw, the boater sported a flat brim topped with a flattened pill-box crown, surrounded with the prototypical solid or striped grosgrain ribbon band around the crown; sometimes decorated with a ribbon in the school colors by British schools in the 1880s. The boater is supposedly derived from the flat-topped caps of French sailors and first began as a piece of children's attire in the middle of the nineteenth-century. Wikipedia suggests that the boater was allegedly worn by FBI agents as a sort of unofficial uniform in the pre-war years. Though nowadays, unfortunately, they are rarely seen, aside from still being used as apart of school uniform in many boys schools in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as Harrow School-- remaining an ageless article of school attire even in modern times. Although many schools dropped the boater from their uniforms when it was adopted for orphanages, many schools nonetheless retained the boater-- even with its diminished style as an adult style after the 1930s-- as it was commonly found on the heads of English public school children, both male and female.
Along with the Homburg and Fedora hats, the boater was mostly worn during informal occasions, with debate upon exactly how far to the side and how much forward the hat should be worn. The omnipresence of the boater was like that of the bowler hat, a primary symbol of modernity throughout the period 1850-1950. In a work entitled The Man in the Bowler Hat, Fred Robinson noted that the Bowler hat is “rich with its various and (seemingly) contradictory meanings; its iconographic vocabulary is complex.” The boater, as an artifact of cultural decadence, is like that of the bowler in that it was both loved and loathed, contradictory symbols of privilege and subjectivity. The boater and the bowler are both capable of representing a multiplicity of social situations and conflicts.
Maurice Chevalier, the French chansonier and actor, left the world with one of the most enduring images of the boater (or canotier as it is known in French) in the 20s and 30s, tipped forward almost completely shielding the eyes. The boater became a rather important piece of prop for entertainers. The earliest vaudeville acts took the form of chapeaugraphy, a panhandling trick in which a ring-shaped piece of felt is manipulated to look like various type of hats, creating an innumerable number of hat varieties and persons signified by the wearing of a particular type of hat. Changing his new shape like a chameleon, justifying each new shape, the chapeaugraphist was able to depict dozens of different characters-- both male and female-- in rapid succession. The popularity of chapeaugraphy portrays the fact that until the second World War, hat culture was a part of everyday life. Unlike contemporary society, hat-wearing was an essential item in the everyday attire of an individual.
Lastly, the boater may provide the occasional gent with a bit of simple amusement, as the boater can also be swung about, tossed like a frisbee, or flipped, donned, and tipped in dedication to the early vaudeville performers that have given the boater hat its distinguished meaning and style.
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