Indiana Jones and the hunt for his Fedora Hat

Summer is traditionally the time for the biggest blockbuster, fan pleasing movies and whilst the recently opened Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is still pulling in the punters, there is another company that is doing very well out of it all. They being Herbert Johnson, a 134-year-old London hatmaker that makes the original Fedora Hats for Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford

The hat first donned by Harrison Ford in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” back in 1981 and though unerringly the sales of Fedora hats seem to rise and fall with every Indiana Jones film, recently there has been a seven fold increase in sales of their wonderful Fedora hats with a backorder of 300 hats to be lovingly made in Cambridgeshire.

Herbert Johnson made the hates for the next two Indiana jones films but for the “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, Indy’s fourth adventure, in 2008, the producers went elsewhere. Perhaps that is why that films seems to be widely loathed by fans.

If you’re going to order an original Indiana Jones Fedora hat then be prepared for two things, the first is a possible six month waiting list and the second is to pay £495 ($630) which comes with an optional “Raiders turn”, a 25-degree twist of the crown to match the jaunty angle at which Mr Ford wore his, the reasoning being it supposedly to kept it on during his legendary stunts and chase sequences. If your day to day real life activities don’t involved fighting nazis and protecting ancient artefacts then the hat should be kept out of heavy rain and intense heat whilst only being brushed in an anticlockwise manner.

The master hatter believes that hat-wearing is making a comeback and there are certainly one or two wonderful hat shops in Mayfair and St James’s in London.

Indiana Jones styles a classic fedora-style hat which he is barely seen without throughout the entire franchise. The hat that fans see him in is a classic fedora, which has quite a history!

The fedora hat was initially inspired by a play in 1883 called “Fedora”, created by the French playwright Victorien Sardou. 

In this play, Sarah Bernhardt plays the role of a princess. This same actress was known for adopting men’s fashion and acting roles, which often shocked audiences. 

The play’s first review named the hat worn by Bernhardt the “fedora”, and the term “fedora hat” became a term used within the vocabulary of womenswear, and later menswear too. Soon after this, the fedora hat became a popular fashion statement and a symbol for women activists everywhere. 

Before long, the fedora style was worn by many women and some fashion-forward men like Oscar Wilde and Prince Edward VIII. 

Fast-forward 140 years, and the fedora hat is still a popular style around the world. I must say I’d rather like one but then I’d also like one of his leather jackets which are also made in the U.K. by Wested Leather Co in Kent.

If you’d like an authentic Indiana Jones Hat then visit Herbert Johnson online.

For myself, I tend to go past their shop almost every day on my Winston Churchill and War Rooms private walking tour. Winston used to get his luggage just a few feet away. One of his great problems in life is that he could never quite afford the lavish lifestyle that he was accustomed to. I do feel his pain!