Head covering of any of various styles, used for warmth,
fashion, or religious or ceremonial purposes, when it often
symbolizes the office or rank of the wearer. In the West,
through the Middle Ages, men wore hats in the form of caps or
hoods, and women wore veils, hoods, or head draperies. The silk
top hat originated in Florence c. 1760. The derby (bowler) was
introduced in 1850. The cloth cap with visor was for decades the
international standard for workingmen and boys. Women's hats
went through periods of astonishing ostentation, the last being
the years preceding World War I. Since c. 1960 the wearing of
hats by both men and women has greatly declined in the West.
With 15th-century origins, the broad-brimmed sombrero is still
popular in Mexico and parts of Latin America. The people of East
Asia have devised head coverings as simple as the near-
ubiquitous one-piece flattened cone used when working outside,
and as elaborate and decorative as the Japanese cap-shaped
kammuri of black lacquered silk decorated