A top hat is a tall, straight-sided hat with a flat crown tip and a narrow brim that curls up at the sides, worn as formal headwear since the late 1700s. Historically it was built from silk plush over a stiffened body; today almost every new one is made of stiffened fur felt or wool felt. If you are asking what is a top hat beyond the silhouette, the answer is a dress code: the top hat is the only hat traditionally worn with white tie and with formal morning dress.
At JJ Hat Center, a New York hat shop since 1911, the top hat question comes up in two very different conversations — a wedding or a gala on one side, a stage role or a period costume on the other. The right hat is not the same in both cases, and most of the confusion comes from not knowing which part of the hat actually carries the formality: the crown stiffness and the material, not the height.
What Is a Top Hat, Exactly? The Anatomy
Four features separate a top hat from every other formal hat:
- A tall cylindrical crown that flares slightly outward toward the top, rather than tapering inward. A dress topper usually stands about five to six inches tall at the side.
- A flat crown tip, set at a right angle to the sides. No center dent, no teardrop crease — the creasing you see on a fedora has no place here.
- A narrow brim with a strong side curl. The brim is close-cut, snapped down slightly at front and back and rolled up sharply at the sides, so the profile reads as a near-vertical column.
- A grosgrain ribbon band and bound brim edge, with the ribbon bow set on the left side.
Inside, a well-made topper has a leather sweatband and a lining — traditionally white or ivory silk, often printed with the hatter's name. The crown of a genuine dress hat is rigid: press it and it does not give. That stiffness is structural, not decoration, and it is why a top hat cannot be reshaped at home the way a soft felt hat can.
What Is a Top Hat Made Of?
Material is the single biggest difference between a costume hat and a hat you can wear to a wedding. Three constructions account for nearly all of them.
Silk Plush — the Antique Standard
The original dress top hat was not felt at all. It was a cotton gossamer shell, stiffened with shellac and blocked into shape, then covered in hatter's plush: a silk pile fabric woven on specialized looms, largely in France, with a long, mirror-smooth nap that catches light like polished glass. Weaving of hatter's plush ended in the middle of the twentieth century, and no one has restarted it at scale. That is why every genuine silk topper on the market today is vintage, repaired and re-blocked rather than newly made, and why collectors pay accordingly.
If you own one: the nap is the value. It is brushed with a soft velvet pad in one direction only, and it is ruined permanently by water.
Fur Felt — the Modern Standard
Felt made from rabbit, hare, or beaver fur is what a serious new top hat is built from. Fur fibers are finer and more tightly barbed than wool, so the felt can be made dense and thin at the same time, then stiffened and blocked into a crown that holds a crisp edge for decades. A fur felt topper has a dry, matte surface rather than a shine, which reads as understated rather than theatrical — the correct note for a formal daytime wedding. Our fur felt hats sit in this family, and the blocking and stiffening steps are the same ones described in our guide to how a premium hat is made.
Wool Felt — the Occasional-Wear Option
Wool felt is thicker, slightly fuzzier, and less able to hold a knife-sharp brim curl. For a hat worn once a year, for a costume, or for a stage production where it will be handled roughly, that is a sensible trade. For a hat meant to outlive the occasion it was bought for, it is not. You can see the difference in hand immediately: wool feels spongy, fur felt feels like firm card stock. Browse wool felt hats alongside the full felt hat range and the distinction is obvious under your fingers.
Types of Top Hats
The types of top hats are not interchangeable styles — each one belongs to a specific dress code or use.
| Type | Defining feature | Traditionally worn with |
|---|---|---|
| Full dress topper | Black, tallest crown, strongest side curl; silk plush or black fur felt | White tie, full evening dress |
| Gray (dove gray) topper | Same shape in pale gray felt, often with a self-colored band | Morning dress: formal daytime weddings, race meetings |
| Collapsible opera hat | Spring-steel ribs inside a plush shell; folds flat under the arm | Evening dress, opera and theater boxes |
| Stovepipe | Straight, non-flared sides, noticeably taller | Nineteenth-century American dress; Lincoln-era period looks |
| Riding or coachman's topper | Shorter crown, reinforced shell, secure fit | Historic equestrian turnout and carriage driving |
| Short fashion topper | Crown cut well under five inches, often wool | Costume, steampunk, stage — not formalwear |
Two of these deserve a word of warning. The collapsible opera hat, a Parisian invention of the 1830s, is a genuinely clever object — but the spring mechanism in vintage examples fails, and a failed spring is rarely economic to repair. And the short fashion topper is the one most often bought by mistake: it photographs like a top hat and reads, in person, as a costume piece. If the occasion is a wedding, skip it.
Competition riding has moved on from the coachman's topper almost entirely: equestrian bodies now require certified protective headgear in most disciplines where a topper was once standard, so that hat survives today in exhibition and carriage driving rather than in the arena.
When to Wear a Top Hat
Knowing when to wear a top hat is simpler than most guides make it sound, because the hat is tied to two dress codes and a short list of traditions.
- White tie. The black dress topper is the correct hat with full evening dress — tailcoat, white waistcoat, white bow tie. In the United States this means a small number of charity galas, diplomatic events, and formal balls.
- Morning dress. With a morning coat at a formal daytime wedding, the gray topper is traditional; black is acceptable and more common in the US, where gray morning dress is rarer than in Britain.
- Formal race meetings and parades. Horse racing keeps the tradition alive — a morning-dress party in a box is one of the few places a topper still looks ordinary. New York's Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue is another: it is explicitly a hat event, and toppers appear every year.
- Stage, film, and period events. Theater, magic, Dickens festivals, vintage balls. Here the hat is a prop, and wool felt is a defensible choice.
Where it does not belong: business dress, cocktail attire, black tie. A top hat with a tuxedo is a costume error, not a flourish — black tie takes no hat of this kind. And like any formal hat, it comes off indoors, except in a lobby, a corridor, or a crowded public space where there is nowhere to put it.
How Should a Top Hat Fit?
A top hat is less forgiving than any other hat in the shop, for one reason: leverage. A tall, rigid crown acts as a lever on your head, so a hat that is half a size loose will rock with every step and lift in wind, and one that is half a size tight will press hard at the temples within an hour.
Two things follow from that.
Measure properly. Run a tape around your head about a finger's width above the ears and across the fullest part at the back, keeping it level. That circumference in inches converts directly to the US hat size — about 22 3/4 inches (58 cm) is a 7 1/4, and each eighth of a size step is about three eighths of an inch. Tape stretched tight gives you a hat that hurts; tape too loose gives you one that rocks.
Check the oval, not just the size. Heads are oval, and so are hats — some long and narrow, some rounder. On a soft hat a mismatch is tolerable. On a stiffened topper it is not: a long oval head in a round-oval hat gets two pressure points at the temples and gaps front and back. If the hat is correct in size but hurts in exactly two spots, the oval is wrong, not the number.
One more practical point: a shellacked crown has very little give, so the usual remedy of stretching a felt hat a touch with a hat jack does not apply the way it does to a fedora. With a dress topper, buy the size that fits.
Caring for and Storing a Top Hat
A top hat spends most of its life in storage, which is exactly where most of them are damaged.
- Brush after each wearing, with a soft brush, counter-clockwise around the crown and always in one consistent direction on the nap. Dust left on the surface works into the felt and dulls it.
- Keep water away from the finish. Shellac-stiffened bodies and silk plush both react badly to water — a soaked topper can cockle and lose its shape irreversibly. Caught in rain, let it dry at room temperature away from radiators, then brush.
- Store it upside down on its crown tip, or in a hat box. Never rest a top hat on its brim: the narrow brim and curl carry the whole weight and will flatten. A rigid box is not an accessory for a hat of this kind, it is the only safe storage, and our guide to hat care and storage covers the specifics.
- Handle it by the brim, not the crown. Fingers on the crown transfer oil to the most visible surface on the hat.
Choosing a Top Hat: What a Hatter Checks First
When someone brings a top hat to our counter for an opinion, we look at four things in this order: the stiffness of the crown, the crispness of the brim curl, the finish of the interior, and the ribbon work. All four are decided in the factory and none can be improved later. A hat that is soft in the crown, soft in the curl, raw inside and crooked at the bow will look wrong in photographs no matter what you pay for the suit.
Brand is a shortcut to those four, because a house with a long felt tradition rarely gets the curl or the ribbon wrong. Of the hatmakers we carry, Stetson ranks first by sales in our shop, with Lierys and Borsalino next — and across the whole range, structured hats narrowly outsell caps. If you are starting from the occasion rather than the brand, our top hats collection is the place to begin, and the broader felt hats range covers the formal alternatives — a homburg or a dress fedora — for occasions where a topper is more hat than the invitation calls for.
That last point is worth saying plainly. The top hat is the most specific hat in menswear. Bought for the occasion it belongs to, nothing substitutes for it. Bought as a general-purpose formal hat, it will sit in its box. Since 1911 we have watched both decisions play out on Fifth Avenue, and the people who wear theirs are the ones who knew which event they were buying it for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a top hat and a stovepipe hat?
A stovepipe hat has straight, parallel sides and a taller crown; a standard top hat flares slightly outward toward the crown tip and has a stronger side curl in the brim. The stovepipe is the nineteenth-century American form most people recognize from portraits of Abraham Lincoln.
Can you still buy a new silk top hat?
Not a genuine one. The silk plush fabric used for dress toppers stopped being woven in the mid-twentieth century, so every real silk top hat today is a vintage hat, often re-blocked and re-ribboned. New top hats are made of stiffened fur felt or wool felt, and the best fur felt examples are excellent hats in their own right.
How tall is a top hat?
A traditional dress topper measures roughly five to six inches from the brim to the crown tip, with stovepipe forms running taller. Anything much under five inches is a fashion or costume hat rather than formalwear.
Is a top hat the same as a bowler?
No. A bowler has a rounded, domed crown about half the height of a top hat and was originally practical headwear for riding and working, not formal dress. The two are not interchangeable under any dress code.
Do you take a top hat off indoors?
Yes. Like any formal hat, it comes off when you enter a building and stays off at the table. Lobbies, corridors, and crowded public spaces are the accepted exceptions, which is one reason the collapsible opera hat was invented — it folds flat enough to sit under your arm or beneath a seat.
