Opera hat
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An opera hat, also called a chapeau claque or gibus, is a top hat variant that is collapsible through a spring system, originally intended for less spacious indoor venues, such as the theatre and oper
French comic book from 1926 that exhibits the advantages with the spring device mechanism of the collapsible top hat.
Bicorne
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The bicorne or bicorn is a hat widely adopted in the 1790s as a form of military headgear by European militaries. Bicornes saw widespread usage during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and
Opera hat
…gibus or more often opera hat. The construction may originally have been inspired by a historical hat model called chapeau bras ('arm hat'), made as bicorne or tricorne to be carried folded under the arm. On 5 May 1812, London hatter Thomas Francis Dollman patented a design for "an elastic round hat" supported…
Early bicorne from France, c. 1790
Napoléon Bonaparte in his characteristic side-to-side bicorne hat (detail from an 1810 painting by Joseph Chabord)
Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz wearing a fore-and-aft bicorne (photograph from World War I-era postcard)
British Army cocked hat with General officer's plume, worn by Lord Dannatt (Constable of the Tower)