Everything to know about the history of the baseball cap
The baseball cap is so ubiquitous in American culture that it could be called America’s national hat. Made up of a soft cap and stiff visor, it is typically adjustable at the back thanks to a plastic, Velcro or elastic band. The baseball style of cap derived from earlier brimmed hats popular in the late 19th century, including deerstalkers popularised by the illustrations of Sherlock Holmes, jockey caps, military “pillbox” caps, fedoras and boaters. The earliest baseballs caps were made of wool with a leather bill and were worn exclusively by baseball players in the mid- to late-19th century. As the 20th century dawned, the headgear moved off the field and into everyday wardrobes. Today, the baseball cap is worn to show support for a team, as a fashion statement or a way to get a message across, as seen by the red Make America Great Again trucker hats (a type of baseball cap) worn by Donald Trump and his supporters.
The earliest baseball teams — the sport was invented in America around 1800 and the National League founded in 1876 — did not wear standardised hats. Players were free to wear any type of brimmed hat to keep the sun out of their eyes. Many preferred the straw boater style or the pillbox style. Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide of 1888 shows a wide variety of caps worn by baseball players, including soft and hard cap styles. The cap as we know it today began to take shape around the turn of the century: air holes were added in the 1890s; a logo appeared for the first time in 1901, when the Detroit Tigers put an image of a running orange tiger on the front of the cap; sticking was added to the visor in 1903; longer bills were introduced in the 1920s and 1930s, and the visor became firmer; the crown became more vertical by the 1940s, allowing the front of the cap to become a billboard of sorts and shaping it into the style of cap that we know today. In 2007, the Major Baseball League changed the standard cap from wool to polyester for players’ comfort.
While the look of the baseball cap hasn’t changed significantly since the 1950s, attitudes towards the it have. Jim Lilliefors, author of , offers several reasons for the rising popularity of the baseball cap and its acceptance off the field. As the broadcasting of baseball on television helped the sport became popular, fans began to want to show support for their teams through their hats. In the 1960s, agriculture companies began to realise the cap’s potential for advertising and promotional caps – known today as trucker hats – became increasingly popular in the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, baseball caps were vaunted for their role in shading faces from the sun, for both men and women. summertime fashion spreads from this period reinforced this notion, helping the cap become genderless. Finally, the wearing of baseball caps by TV and movie stars such as Tom Selleck in the role of Thomas Magnum on , the character of MacGyver from the show of the same name, and Tom Cruise in , cemented the cap’s transition from field to fashion.
As the cap became mainstream, men and women began to play with the style, turning it backwards or sideways as a symbol of personal expression. The headgear was adopted by musicians, from rappers to punk rockers and grunge singers in the 1990s to pop stars and the MTV generation in the 2000s. Celebrities began to use the hat as a way to shield their faces from the paparazzi. As it gained popularity, the style also crossed borders. Young British middle-class urbanites adopted the baseball hat as part of their standard uniform in the early 2000s.
Today, the baseball cap or trucker hat is sometimes worn ironically or as a way to demonstrate affiliation with the working class. However, fashion brands such as A.P.C, Burberry, Brunello Cucinelli, Gucci and Kenzo have all made high-end versions of the cap that push it into the domain of luxury fashion. While expensive iterations may signal status, the affordability of the common baseball cap, as well as its longevity as a fashion statement, has helped it to remain firmly part of the modern style lexicon.
Rockford Peaches women’s baseball team, 1944
Roberto Clemente, 1955
Katharine Hepburn, 1950
A model in
, 1977
Farmers, 1987
Jimmy Carter, 1976
Madonna, 1985
Boy George, 1987
Lauren Hutton, 1989
Princess Diana, 1988
Prince Harry and Prince William, 1991
Donatella Versace and Elton John, 1991
Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, 1992
Janet Jackson, 1990
Bill Clinton, 1993
Mark Wahlberg, 1991
Spike Lee, 1995
Jay-Z, 1999
Beyoncé, 2002
Gisele Bündchen and Leonardo DiCaprio, 2003
Naomi Campbell, 2002
Gwen Stefani, 2003
The Dalai Lama, 2005
Rihanna, 2016
Kenzo ready-to-wear spring/summer 2015
Burberry ready-to-wear autumn/winter ’17/’18
Balenciaga ready-to-wear autumn/winter ’18/’19
Gigi Hadid, 2019