I have a dream, that one day, bicorne hats will be in fashion again. 

-Naporatio 03.09.2024

Hello Naporatio and welcome to the board.

If you like bicornes you might be interested to learn that all sorts of headgear subjects have been discussed here over the years, from phrygian caps, medieval helmets and hennins, through berets, barettinas and bowlers, fezes and fedoras, to trilbies and tophats, and indeed more generally such matters as when and why did men stop wearing hats?

If you're not already aware of this excellent youtube poster's work, you might be interested in this:



Personally if we are dreaming for a re-renaissance of old sartorial fashions, I'd quite like to see the return - for young men at least - of short doublets combined with tight-fitting hose and codpieces.  

Although, with the increasing prevalence of form-fitting lycra sportsgear, athletic supports and other 'male-enhancing' underwear - even when worn in public, generally - I guess we're actually not so far away.

Meles meles wrote:

Hello Naporatio and welcome to the board.

If you like bicornes you might be interested to learn that all sorts of headgear subjects have been discussed here over the years, from phrygian caps, medieval helmets and hennins, through berets, barettinas and bowlers, fezes and fedoras, to trilbies and tophats, and indeed more generally such matters as when and why did men stop wearing hats?

If you're not already aware of this excellent youtube poster's work, you might be interested in this:



Personally if we are dreaming for a re-renaissance of old sartorial fashions, I'd quite like to see the return - for young men at least - of short doublets combined with tight-fitting hose and codpieces.  

Although, with the increasing prevalence of form-fitting lycra sportsgear, athletic supports and other 'male-enhancing' underwear - even when worn in public, generally - I guess we're actually not so far away.

Thank you for the suggestion! By the way, what is this ''board'' i keep hearing of? I keep seeing it mentioned but i have no idea what it is.

It comes about because this discussion forum, Res Historica, was started when, what were then called the BBC "History Message Boards" (run by the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation) were all shut down in 2011, to save money. Many of the BBC's history-oriented community of online posters then moved here, to Res His' ... although time has taken its toll and there aren't so many of the original BBC posters still around. I assume you've seen Tim of Aclea's recent post about the origins of the BBC Message-boards and hence the circumstances that led to Res Historica being created.

Naporatio wrote:

Thank you for the suggestion!

Seconded. That's a very informative little video Meles. Thanks for posting the link.

It's interesting what Jean-Charles Foyer says about bicorns being relegated to dress uniforms from the 1820s onwards. From the following decade, a character who is often portayed in art and film as wearing a bicorn, and wearing it athwart, is that of Mr Bumble, the parochial beadle who features in Charles Dickens' 1837 novel Oliver Twist. Dickens describes Bumble's official uniform as including 'a gold-laced coat' with 'gilt-edged lappel' and 'large brass buttons' and also 'a cocked hat'. He doesn't, however, mention whether the hat is a bicorn or a tricorn. Dickens offers a couple of tantalising clues though. At one point he says that, in a state of excitement, 'Mr. Bumble put on his cocked hat wrong side first' and flounced out of a shop. Later we hear that he 'put on his cocked hat corner-wise and danced'. This was Bumble celebrating his wooing of Mrs Corney, the widow matron of the workhouse. The 'wrong side first' incident might suggest that the hat was tricorn while the 'corner-wise' detail could suggest that it was bicorn.




(An early depiction of Mr Bumble in a tricorn by George Cruikshank from 1845)




(A 21st century British postage stamp reproducing Joseph Clarke's 1889 cartoon of Bumble in a bicorn)


Whether it was a bicorn or a tricorn, Bumble's marriage to Mrs Corney and his subsequent promotion to master of the workshouse effected a seeming demotion in his sumptuary status. Dickens writes - 'The mighty cocked hat was replaced by a modest round one. Mr. Bumble was no longer a beadle.' Dickens explains:

'There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer, require peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.'

And so it would prove to be. At one point, the former Mrs Corney (now Mrs Bumble) berates Bumble in front of the inmates for his interference in the affairs of the workhouse laundry (her department) and dismisses him from the room - "Be off!". Dickens goes on:

'He looked dejectedly round, and slunk away; and, as he reached the door, the titterings of the paupers broke into a shrill chuckle of irrepressible delight. It wanted but this. He was degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and station before the very paupers; he had fallen from all the height and pomp of beadleship, to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.'

Despite (or maybe because of) his own domestic shortcomings, Charles Dickens was certainly an astute observer of the human condition.