At Vintage-Toppers, while we focus on preparing the best top hats and providing good customer service, we like to collect interesting facts about our product.

Interesting Facts about Top Hats

• 1814 first record of a white rabbit being pulled out of a top hat, by a French Magician named Louis Comte.

• The American financier J P Morgan loved wearing top hats so much he had his cars made with a high roof so he could ride around wearing his beloved hats!

• London's iconic Black Taxi Cabs have to be tall enough to accommodate a gentleman wearing a top hat - even today!

• The doyen of etiquette, the American Emily Post said in the 1920s "always wear your top hat level on your head".

• Yet if you look at the best example of a wearer Lord Ribblesdale (Queen Victoria's Lord in Waiting) by John Singer Sargent you'll see the jaunty angle employed.

• Fred Astaire wore top hats in 12 of his films (notably Top Hat in 1935) and he wore the hat at a jaunty and rakish angle.

• John F Kennedy was the last to wear a top hat at his presidential inauguration in 1961

• Average Head size today 7 1/8, to 7 1/4. 19th and early 20th century 6 5/8 or even smaller; hence larger hats are at a premium.