Wargame Warrior

Extract from Victorian Men's Fashions, 1850-1900: Hats - http://www.victorianweb.org/art/costume/nunn22.html

The tall silk or top hat continued for formal day and evening wear; the opera hat (gibus), covered in corded silk, also continued for visiting the theatre, as it could be folded flat and put under the seat. A light grey top hat was worn in the late 1860s for coaching or racing parties (and is still worn for Ascot Week in England). The bowler (Derby) named after its designer, the hatter William Bowler, worn from 1860, was a hard felt hat with a domed crown, varying in height over the years, and a narrow brim rolled up at the sides. At first, when worn with the loungejacket, it was black, but as its popularity increased it was also made in brown or fawn and teamed with the Norfolk jacket. A similar hat with a hard square crown was worn in the 1890s and much favoured by Winston Churchill, who continued to wear it into the 20th century.

From the 1870s an increasing number of hats were considered suitable for informal wear. The Homburg, made fashionable by the Prince of Wales, was a stiff felt hat with a dent in the crown running from back to front, its brim bound with ribbon and curving up at the sides. The trilby, worn in the 1890s, had a similar dent in the crown but was softer with a wider, unbound brim. The wide-awake, a broad-brimmed felt hat with a lowish crown, was a, countryman's hat, but there are photographs of Alfred Tennyson looking extremely impressive in one in the 1850s. The boater, a stiff straw hat with a moderately deep, flat-topped crown encircled by a petersham ribbon and a flat narrow brim, was universally popular with men and women for the country, the seaside and boating; also worn by the seaside was the helmet, made of cloth with a small brim and a helmet-shaped sectional crown. Caps of tweed or firmly woven wool had small peaks and were quite close-fitting; the deer-stalker had a peak fore and aft and ear-flaps worn tied together on the top of the crown.

Wideawake Hat

by Hat Guide on March 16, 2011 in Men’s Hats, Religious Hats

A Quaker style hat

A Wideawake Hat also known as a Quaker hat, is a men’s hat worn by Quakers who settled in parts of the United States in 18th and 19th centuries. Rembrandt was wearing a style of Wideawake Hat in his 1632 self portrait.

Wideawakes are usually made from black or brown felt and have a fairly wide brim that is upturned slightly from the base of the hat on the left and right sides, while being pretty flat on the front and back with a fairly blunt top as opposed to the well rounded top of a bowler. Usually there is also a fairly tall black hatband around the base, just above the brim.

Wideawake Hats have been worn by some early Scouts as listed in Scouting for Boys.

Looks similar enough to the Boer hat for me.  Would get floppy if made of felt and exposed to the weather I would imagine.

Fair enough. Heligoland is a bit isolated and rural, “country” hats that are practical would be more common than the current fashions.

Just read an old article by Barry which mentions he was an extra in a film wearing a tricorn........at first.......after a couple of days being worn in the rain etc, it had it's colour washed out and was completely shapeless.

I would think that pretty much any headgear from the age (baseball caps probably wouldn't fit) could be worn by non-uniformed troops, depends on what you owned.  Dockers and the like would likely wear that baggy flat cap so popular with TV and film directors. At the end of the day, it's a fiction, so we can decide, within reason, the fashions of the day.

Here's what I've been looking for:

I'd love to get some of these Hinterland Miniatures female hussars. They'd make great Freikorps. Anyone spots them for sale in the UK or elsewhere in the EU please let me know.

The female sailors are very nice too.

Redoubt with photos on their site? The world's goone mad!   Getting some of the Victoriana  urchins...

Told you it had gone all modern.

They do some interesting stuff hidden away in some of there ranges.

Have you spied these ? Part of Perry's 'Cape Wars' listings, about 50 years to early, but local militia or independent companies ?

These are in the ACW lists, fair number appear suitable for local troops/militia/civvies

Rioters are something I definitely need. They are on the list!