A boater, also known as English Panama, cady, canotier and sennit hat, is a semi-formal summer hat for men which became popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is normally made of stiff straw.
Boater hats have long been associated with leisure at the seaside or close to the water, having emerged from the canotier straw hats worn by gondoliers in Venice, their ribbons hanging freely off the back. One can spot boaters worn by people summering in many works of the impressionists, who chose to portray people at leisure. Such is the case with the painting “Boating” as it was adequately named by Edouard Manet.
Apart from rowing and sporting events, boater hats have been associated with school uniforms and semi-formal dressing. In fact, a boater was the trademark look for everyone who wanted to look casual yet stylish, from business magnates to athletic managers, stock brokers and early 19th century actors such as Harold Lloyd and Maurice Chevalier.
The female equivalent to the boater, known as the sailor hat, has a wider brim and a ribbon that extends into streamers hanging off the brim. However, Coco Channel was very fond of the “masculine’ boater and made it accessible to women through her “garçon” look.
STRAW HAT DAY
Being an article made of straw, the boater was regarded as a hat for warm weather. In Western Europe and the US the day people would take off their felt or silk hats and don a straw hat instead would appropriately be called “Straw Hat Day”. Although the exact date was not really fixed, people would celebrate the coming of summer by observing the custom. They would also switch back to their winter hats at some specific point during the Fall, usually during the 1st or 15th of September.
It is notable that during “Felt Hat Day” the convention of changing hats would be kept by practises of “acceptable vandalism”. Stock exchangers would deliberately wear straw hats in order to have them destroyed by their companions while groups of young men would pick summer hats from the heads of their owners and smash them down. In New York, during September 1922, things were about to get rather rough.
BEFORE THE FASHION POLICE: STRAW HAT RIOTS
During the “Straw Hat Riot” of 1922, violence broke out when a group of New York City youths took the tradition of taunting people who wore straw hats off-season one step too far. The initial incident took place on September 13 when a group of minors started destroying hats of factory workers employed in the Manhattan area and then tried to stomp on the hats of some of the dock workers as well. Naturally the latter fought back.
What followed was an eight-day riot, with bands of teenagers, clubs in their hands, prowling the streets and beating up anyone who resisted to part with their out-of-season headwear. The events escalated to hat-snatching mobs of reportedly 1000 people, several men hospitalized and the NY police making numerous arrests. As the newspapers of the time inform us, the night courts were filled with juvenile delinquents who had taken the “straw hat” law into their own hands.
This boater hat is made of raffia and trimmed with French grosgrain ribbon. It was handmade by the Istanbul-based company, SIBI, in Kadıköy which is situated at the Asian part of the city. The brand was created by Sibi (Sibel) Schmitz.