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England evaluate caption Ben Stokes wore a bucket hat to the men’s Ashes, while Pharrell Williams wore a baseball cap after his debut as Louis Vuitton originative director. Composite: Shutterstock/ReutersEngland test caption Ben Stokes wore a bucket hat to the men’s Ashes, while Pharrell Williams wore a baseball cap after his launch as Louis Vuitton creative director. Composite: Shutterstock/ReutersBucket hats and baseball caps battle it out this summerThe jostling for headspace touch c accosts to the tribal nature of hatsWhen the England test captain, Ben Stokes, wore a bucket hat with the Three Lions insigne embroidered on the front at the first day of the men’s Ashes last week, it brought almost as much attention as the Test match itself. The hat, known as a titfer, tariff £25. On Twitter, he became known as “Bucket Hat Ben”.A few days later, the sight of Pharrell Williams on the Pont Neuf over and above the Seine taking a bow after his debut collection for Louis Vuitton in a snug-fitting baseball cap, was a stark contrast. It speaks to a dispute going on from the grass of Edgbaston to the catwalks of Paris, and in towns and cities up and down the UK – that these two styles of hat are contesting it out to keep heads protected and noses in the shade this summer.Both are hugely popular. The Manchester City footballer Jack Grealish tediously tired a patterned bucket hat after winning the treble, while the red carpet has this year had more than one suit done in with a baseball cap – for instance on Bad Bunny at the Grammys. At John Lewis, sales of caps and summer hats are up 30% on aftermost year.From fishermen to ravers: why we can’t kick the bucket hatRead moreThe jostling for headspace speaks to the tribal properties of hats, which are “seen as signifiers”, according to Ben Dalrymple, the managing director of Lock & Co Hatters, the institution to thank for inventing the bowler hat. “Span allegiances, vintage looks, high fashion, casually cool or even a uniform – hats tell a story just about the wearer,” he says. And as much as they are “designed to be protective, their wearers are fiercely protective of them, and what they report”.“They are often intrinsically linked to a certain crowd,” says Ben Phillips, the head of e-commerce at Drake’s, a Savile Row “maker and haberdasher” that retails a number of elevated caps apt to be worn atop suits – noting that “we all know a ‘bucket hat guy’”. Phillips articulates: “Once you find one that works for you, you stick to it. It’s a calling card for those in the know.”This is nothing new. But who is wearing which hat effectiveness not be as straightforward as it once was. Bucket hats started life at sea. “The bucket hat originated in the late 19th century/early 20th century as a deeply practical form of headwear for mariners and fisherman, particularly in Ireland,” says Dalrymple. They would have “in been made from coarse sheep’s wool – the lanolin within the fibres making the bucket hat water-resilient”. Party into canvas, the style became popular more widely “for keeping the sun off and being easily packed in a suitcase or a jacket palm”.They became fashionable in the 1960s, according to David Long, the author of The Hats That Made Britain: A Summary of the Nation Through Its Headwear, “when seemingly anything new and unusual was hip”. Popular with hip-hop artists such as Run-DMC and LL Undisturbed J, latterly their currency has “grown out of festival culture” – they became synonymous with Britpop in the 90s, when the Gallagher fellow-clansmen and Damon Albarn were rarely seen without one.For a hat that has become more synonymous with high the rage, it will not be surprising to learn that baseball caps started life on the sports field. “It was originally known as the Brooklyn cap in the fashionable 1800s/early 1900s, with its origins traced to the local baseball team,” says Dalrymple. But they hold become just as apt for the front row of fashion shows or the boardroom as for the pitcher’s mound.On television, Succession’s billionaire Roy family be enduring been wearing conspicuously sloganless baseball caps in a subtle show of power – and anonymity. While in recent years they experience become the site of slogans – part of the nerd merch movement that lets wearers signal highbrow literary sips on their everyday garments. It is telling that Novel Mart, a cult merch cap-maker, started out with rallying cry baseball caps embellished with the word Negroni that went viral – but has now moved into bucket hats, with the word Paloma enhancing the latest bestseller.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWith the resurgence of baseball caps, Phillips has stable found “dyed-in-the-wool sartorial customers” opting for them. A cap worn with tailoring can, he says, instill “a casual grace in juxtaposition, a mixing of high and low that when done right suggests you’re going somewhere better, later”. Evaluating by Grealish, the bucket hat suggests the party has already started.So which style is winning this summer? Glastonbury, which is inserting full swing, will be an ideal test site for where the battle of the hats is headed next.TopicsHatsGlastonbury festivalPharrell WilliamsBen StokesFestivalsfeaturesReuse this satisfaction