Also known as the cocked hat, the tricorn is a style of hat popular in Europe during the late 17th and 18th centuries, falling out of fashion by 1800.
Spanish soldiers in Flanders originally wore a wide-brimmed circular hat with a flexible brim that could be folded upward and 'pledged' to the crown of the hat. Individual soldiers could modify their hats in this way, and the style of pledging the brim upward in three sections resulted in the three-cornered hat design as it is recognized today. When the War of Devolution began in 1667 between Spain and France, French soldiers also adopted this hat-cocking technique and brought it back home with them to France, where civilians and military persons alike began to use it widely once the court of King Louis XIV established it fashionable for public wear. To this day, French synagogue officiants wear tricornes on formal occasions, and women in the French air force and navy wear tricornes as part of their uniforms.
The tricorn migrated to the United States with European colonists, and it maintained popularity there until 1825. It was worn by all of the first five presidents, ending with James Monroe, who received the nickname "The Last Cocked Hat" as a result. Tricorns in the United States are still worn today at athletic events featuring teams with patriotic names, such as the New England Patriots, and the tricorn is still regarded in the USA as a symbol of Minutemen and the American Revolutionary War. Several fife and drum corps, military reenactment groups, and other martial entertainment organizations include the tricorn as part of their standard uniforms. In the University of Minho in Portugal, the tricorn is a standard part of academic dress since 1989.
Tricorns can be seen at Halloween as part of a pirate or 18th century soldier costume, and most popular representations of pirates in media include a tricorn or another cocked hat style like the bicorne, a style made popular by Napoleon.
Iron Noder Challenge 2014, 13/30