Nathan Cooper shows off a redesigned tricorne with a ‘slight western flair.’
A new hat is more than a quirky fashion statement when it adorns Speaker Nathan Cooper, he reminded the Alberta legislature last week.
It’s the start of a new tradition.
Sporting a redesigned tricorne with a “slight western flair,” the Speaker explained that the hat symbolizes the legislature’s connection to common folk — even though common folk for the most part stopped wearing tricornes two centuries ago.
In the 1700s, the hat was popular around much of the world.
Triangular in shape, the tricorne varied in extravagance, style and size but was usually black.
Tricornes protected heads from the elements, especially rain, showed off wigs and were simple to remove and tuck into pockets when manners demanded.
Notes one book, “Worn with one point forward, the tricorne hat emerged as the most fashionable hat for men in the late seventeenth and most of the eighteenth century. To be most stylish, men cocked, or tipped, their tricornes to one side or another.”
Its origins go back to the battlefield, when soldiers wearing broad-rimmed hats pinned the sides up to channel away rainwater, says Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear Through the Ages.
All sorts of people wore tricornes, from aristocrats to pirates.
Alberta’s Speaker — like many others in parliamentary roles — still does. He said: “It is a very auspicious day here in the legislative assembly of Alberta, where a new tradition has begun.”
Cooper worked with the Alberta company Smithbilt Hats on a design that blends elements of a traditional tricorne with the province’s western, ranching, farming and rodeo roots, Cooper said.
“Today it is a reminder every day of the Speaker’s important role to that of the elected representatives and by extension the people of Alberta; the people’s hat, you might say,” Cooper said.
