Tipping optional.
A bowler hat, or derby, is a rounded felt hat commonly worn from the 1850s to the early-to-mid-1900s, especially in Victorian Britain and The Wild West. They were invented as a more compact alternative to a top hat, with the small size, round shape, and harder materials being selected for their original purpose — protecting riders' heads for equestrian country sports (which frequently involved going through trees or simply falling off one's horse). Bowler hats were once considered the national hat of England, and used to be associated with the upper-middle class there, especially with bankers, in the early half of the 20th century.
You can count on a character who wears a bowler hat to be refined (unless, say, he's a villain in a western). In fact, he might even wear a monocle to show his culturedness. The bowler hat hung on in the City of London into the 1960s. In the early 1960s, new recruits to some City law firms got an allowance for the purposes of buying a bowler. A lesser known fact about them (amongst non-wearers) is that they're quite hard (because of both the heavy felt and the shape), which meant that construction foremen (or businessmen visiting a construction site) would sometimes wear them instead of hard hats.
Compare and contrast Dastardly Dapper Derby, although they can overlap- see Wicked Cultured.
Compare Sharp-Dressed Man, Quintessential British Gentleman, Man of Wealth and Taste.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Lucky the Leprechaun, the mascot for General Mills' Lucky Charms cereal, wears a green bowler with a shamrock stuck in it. While not evil, he is a trickster.
- The British bank Bradford & Bingley portrayed its two namesakes as bowler-hatted city gents. Eventually, its logo became a stylised version of the hat itself.
- Likewise there was a period when the symbol of the UK Inland Revenue was a stereotyped taxman in pinstripe suit and bowler.
- If you grew up with the original version of Chuck E. Cheese, then you may have seen Chuck himself always donning his signature red derby on his head.
Anime and Manga
- Speedwagon of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood initially appears as a roguish street tough wearing one of these (with saw blades in the brim!), making it a Dastardly Dapper Derby. However, after getting his ass kicked by Jonathan and being charmed by the Joestar's wholesome nature his hat ends up this trope instead before he replaces it.
- Katri, Girl of the Meadows: Pekka wears a wears a two-pointed bowler hat. Given it's shape and colour, it's likely a reference to Snufkin from The Moomins (bonus points for both Katri and The Moomins being from Finland).
- Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: Lucy's brother Ben wears one. Justified as it's 1800s Australia and it was a popular fashion statement in England, where the Popple family is from.
- Moriarty the Patriot: William wears a bowler hat for the first time in the series in New York, after beginning his Redemption Question, playing with the Dastardly Dapper Derby but continuing his record of being a Sharp-Dressed Man.
Art
- Rene Magritte frequently drew men wearing bowler hats. For instance, in "Golconda
", the sky above a city street is full of them. They appear to symbolise anonymity, which is why Magritte also wore one in Real Life.
Comic Books
- Golden Age Green Lantern sidekick Doiby Dickles is named after his hat.
- Richie Rich's butler, Cadbury, almost always wore a bowler hat in public.
- Bumbling look-a-like detectives Thompson and Thomson in Tintin.
- Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader "Dum Dum" Dugan of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and S.H.I.E.L.D. wears his corporal's stripes on the front of his signature bowler hat.
Film — Animated
- The Steam Engines of Oz: The gentlemanly and heroic Phadrig Diggs—younger brother of the Wizard of Oz—always wears a bowler hat and a monocle. He even sleeps in them.
Film — Live-Action
- Curly of The Three Stooges always looked dapper in his "doiby".
- In The Apartment, CC Baxter buys himself a bowler after he gets his second promotion.
Literature
- Sherlock Holmes's friend and biographer Dr. Watson is often portrayed with a bowler hat, as the Quintessential British Gentleman.
- Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic from Harry Potter, was often described as having a lime green bowler.
- Sweyn embarrasses his brothers in The Great Brain Does It Again when he returns from high school back east wearing a derby hat along with a fancier, more grown-up, style suit than a boy his age would wear in Adenville.
- The Night Circus: Any time Marco ventures outside, he is wearing a dashing bowler from a line of seemingly identical hats that were in his flat when he moved in. Isobel looks for a bowler whenever she is expecting him.
Live-Action TV
- John Steed's hat from The Avengers (1960s) often has a steel plate built into the crown, useful for giving villains a quick clonk on the head.
- In the TV adaptation of Jeeves and Wooster, Jeeves' hat of choice is bowler hat.
- Monty Python's Flying Circus often used these as indicative of bankers and accountants. Probably the principal factor in the demise of the bowler hat was "Monty Python's Flying Circus"'s infamous sketch, "The Ministry Of Silly Walks", which commenced with John Cleese, in full Civil Service getup, including bowler hat, walking down Whitehall toward his office, doing an impression of a spider on a hotplate; for ever afterward, anyone foolhardy enough to venture out of doors wearing a bowler risked being accosted by idiots demanding that they do a Silly Walk.
- Doctor Who: A Time Lord dressed to the nines, including a bowler hat, appears in "Terror of the Autons" as a messenger from the High Council, warning the Doctor that The Master was coming to Earth.
Music
- Chap Hop star Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer often sports a stylish derby.
Newspaper Comics
- Snoopy of Peanuts wears one of these when he's donning his "World Famous Attorney" persona.
Radio
- The protagonists of The Men from the Ministry wear nice, black bowler hats, as do all civil servants in the show.
Video Games
- The robot butler/companion Codsworth in Fallout 4 can't (or won't) wear any equipment in the game except for one of these. However he can no longer wear it if you modify him at all in the robot work bench.
- As a robot originally designed to be a gentleman butler for the affluent, Marquis from Battleborn wears a dandy looking derby as part of his ensemble.
- One of the smashingly classy alternate helmets available to Limbo in Warframe takes the shape of a derby hat with a strange cycloptic 'monocole' in the middle of its face.
- A charmingly diminutive version appears in Team Fortress 2 as the Tipped Lid, originally given out to those who made charitable donations for the Tip of the Hats event.
Webcomics
- Mr Davenport, the Victorian-serial version of Dave in Narbonic, wears a bowler hat, and considers himself a gentleman.
- Pickle Inspector from Problem Sleuth wears a bowler hat, in contrast to Problem Sleuth and Ace Dick's fedoras. He's also the most gentlemanly of the three detectives
Web Original
- Janus from Sanders Sides sports one of these to complement his Wicked Cultured aesthetic. It's common for fanders to theorize that he's hiding something under it.
Western Animation
- The title character of Mr. Benn was always dressed in a black suit and bowler before changing into the costume that would transport him to that week's adventure. At the end of the episode, he would change back into his black suit and bowler hat.
Real Life
