A black top hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat worn prior to and including the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now, it is usually worn only with morning dress or white tie, as servants' or door attendants’ livery, or as a specific rock culture fashion statement.
Top hats started to take over at the end of the 18th century. Within twenty years, black top hats had become popular with all social classes, with even workers wearing them. At that time those worn by members of the upper classes were usually made of felted beaver fur, while those worn by working men were made of rabbit fur; the generic name "stuff hat" was applied to hats made from fur.

The bowler hat, also known as a coke hat, derby or billycock, is a hard felt hat with a rounded crown originally created in 1849 for Edward Coke, the younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester.
The bowler hat was devised in 1849 by the London hat makers Thomas and William Bowler to fulfill an order placed by the firm of hatters Lock & Co. of St James's. Lock & Co. had been commissioned by a customer to design a close-fitting, low-crowned hat to protect his gamekeepers' heads from low-hanging branches while on horseback. It was also hoped that the new style of hat would protect the keepers if they were attacked by poachers.

After an 18th Century hiatus where the tricorn and bicorn (also known as the cocked hat) supplanted the high hat as the fashion of the day, the high hat, in its new iterations, most notable the stove pipe shape that we now know as the top hat, returned to rule the day in the very late 1700s.
Freudian psychologists had their own interpretations on these brown top hats and those who wore them regarding them as obvious phallic symbols. As funny and impractical as top hats may seem to our modern ideas on fashion, they have stood the test of time.

In the United States, bowler’s hat is also known as a “derby hat”. The derby is a dome-shaped rigid hat with a curled small brim and is traditionally made of stiff felt. It was created for an Englishman, James Coke in 1850s, and made stiff to protect the head. Peaking in popularity towards the end of the 19th century, it offered a midway between the formality of the top hat associated with the upper classes and the casual nature of soft felt hats worn by the lower middle classes. It was usually worn with suits or overcoats and symbolized male power dressing. It was the traditional headwear of London city “gents” and has become something of a British cultural icon.

Edwardian hats are very attractive. These hats are toque shape and are made of shaded autumn foliage with berries intermingled, and a bow of velvet in a shade to harmonize with the predominating tone in the foliage is at the back against the brim. The crown is low and formed of the velvet, while the wide brim of velvet is softly draped; the lace falls over the edge all around, with ends resting over the hair at the back. A white velvet rose and autumn leaves are placed against the brim at the left side where it flares.