Jughead's hat

From I'm Learning to Share!, an amazing trivia research post: Search term: "Jughead's hat", which explores why certain American cartoon characters of the 1940s-1960s appear to be wearing crowns. It turns out to be a US fashion - I'd have to say, a remarkably stupid-looking one - of wearing an inside-out raggedly-trimmed fedora, deriving from an originally functional hat made by workers as a homebrew equivalent of the protective beanie. It seems to have been a kind of token nonconformism permitted to teenagers in a totally conformist era, who could signal their nonconformism by wearing a silly hat - commercially produced and adorned wth commercial badges - while not actually doing anything nonconformist. (Found via Languagehat).
- Ray