Bowler hat

From Chaplin to Churchill, the reinforced titfer has moved well beyond The City

- DELWYN MALLETT

NEW YORK'S MUSEUM of Modern Art houses a bronze sculpture entitled Man in the Open Air, created in 1915 by the recently arrived Pole Elie Nadelman Tapering. In sinuous curves, from exaggeratedly broad shoulders to tiny pointed feet, the streamlined-before-streamlining figure of a 'modern man' leans nonchalantly against an equally stylised tree, striking the pose of a dandy or flâneur. The polished surface bears no indication of clothing other than a string bow tie and a bowler hat.

As Nadelman was creating his sculpture, on the opposite coast of America an expatriate British vaudeville actor was improvising a costume for his role in a Mack Sennett 'one-reeler! Throwing together baggy trousers, big shoes, a too-tight jacket, a springy cane and topping it off with, emblematically, a too-small bowler, Charlie Chaplin created The Little Tramp, the greatest of all comic creations.

Part of the cultural landscape bridging three centuries, the bowler started life in 1849 as a proto crash helmet for a toff's gamekeepers but rapidly percolated up through Britain's social strata. Before long it was the preferred wear for men of all stripes - paupers, princes and poets, artisans and artists - eventually being adopted to a man by City gents and becoming almost as symbolic of London and England as red doubledecker buses and black cabs.