Where Did You Get that Hat? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Akubra

The Akubra is traditionally made of rabbit fur felt and it was first made in Tasmania by Benjamin Dunkerley, who emigrated from England and set up his hatmaking business in 1874. He later moved from Tasmania to Sydney. The trade name Akubra was first used in 1912.

When Benjamin died in 1918, his son-in-law Stephen Keir took over the business and it is still a family concern, now located in Kempsey, New South Wales and run by Benjamin's great-great-grandchildren. It was Stephen Keir who changed the company's name from Dunkerley Hat Mills to Akubra.

The famous slouch hat worn by Australian soldiers is an Akubra hat, and the company is also licenced to produce Stetsons in Australia. Akubra now makes over 100 different styles in a variety of colours and brim widths.

The Akubra is a hard-wearing piece of headgear worn primarily by graziers, stockmen and farmers. It does more than merely protect the pate from the sun and rain. It has been used to gather eggs, berries and other edibles, fan fires, and even to hold drinking water for humans, dogs, horses, and cattle.

Boonie hats are soft cotton wide brimmed hats worn by the armed forces of many different countries, the ushanka is a fur hat with pull-down ear flaps found in Russia (often on the heads of soldiers), and the salakot is a wide-brimmed hat worn in the Philippines.

Answer: You're a Roman Catholic priest

The zucchetto is the silk skull cap worn by Roman Catholic priests and prelates. Popes wear white zucchetti, cardinals wear red, bishops wear violet and every other RC cleric wears black. The zucchetto has been worn since the 13th century and was derived from the pileus, a broad-brimmed hat worn by Romans.

It lost the brim and was originally worn only under the mitre or biretta. Nowadays it can be worn alone.

Answer: Peru

The chullo is worn in the Andes, in Peru and also in Bolivia. It fits close to the head with flaps that cover the ears (it gets very cold in the high Andes!) and it is woven from vicuna, llama, alpaca or sheep's wool.

One doesn't have to visit either Peru or Bolivia to own a chullo. I have one that I bought in a shop called Ten Thousand Villages which is owned and operated by the Mennonite Central Committee. It carries all sorts of products from developing countries and has a fair trade marketing policy. My chullo is great protection against the bitter Canadian winters.

Answer: Gamekeepers

The bowler hat was created in 1850 by Thomas Bowler at Lock's of St. James', hatters to Thomas William Coke, the Earl of Leicester. It was designed as part of the livery worn by Lord Leicester's gamekeepers (he wanted a hard hat to protect the gamekeeper's head against attack by poachers, so the story goes).

The hard felt hat with rounded crown proved to be a popular choice of headgear for the males of the burgeoning middle class in Victorian times. The same style of hat is called a derby in the US because it was popularized in the States by Lord Derby when he visited this part of the world in the 19th century. Women in South America have worn a type of bowler hat called the bombin since the 1920s when it was introduced into their culture by railroad workers.

Answer: At a university graduation ceremony

The Tudor cap is a soft small brimmed hat with a tassel attached to a cord affixed to the crown. It is still worn in the Groves of Academe and is part of academic formal dress, so you'd be most likely to see one - or more - at a university graduation ceremony in the UK and in North America.

Nobody wears hats in the British courts (although when the UK still had the death penalty, the judge would place a square of black cloth, known as the black cap, atop his wig when pronouncing the death sentence on the prisoner in the dock).

Not even women have to wear hats - Tudor caps or any other style - in the Church of England nowadays, although HM the Queen wears a hat when she attends church, but that may be because she's the temporal head of the Church of England and feels that she has a certain standard to maintain.

The students at Eton wear top hats as part of their formal uniform, not Tudor caps.

Answer: Tarboosh

The fez is also known as the tarboosh. It is a red felt hat in the shape of a truncated cone with a silk tassel (usually black) appended to the crown. It is worn by men in the eastern Mediterranean countries, and a smaller version of the fez/tarboosh, made of rich stiff cloth like brocade and adorned with jewels, is sometimes worn by women.

The gutrah, ogal and thagiyah are the component pieces of the head covering worn in the Persian Gulf region. The thagiyah is a skull cap, over which the scarf called the gutrah is draped. The ogal is the cord that holds the gutrah in place.

Answer: A brown fur hat

The kolpik is the brown fur hat worn by Hassidic (or Hasidic) Jewish men, usually the unmarried sons and grandsons of Rebbes, on the Sabbath and High and Holy Days. It dates back to the beginnings of the Hassidim in Russia, Ukraine and Poland in the 17th century. The kolpik may also be referred to as the shtreimel.

The Russian army cap is the ushanka, and the broad-brimmed Philippine hat is the salakot.

Answer: Colombia

The vueltiao is a broad brimmed hat made of black and khaki dried palm braids sewn together with indigenous figures woven into the crown and the brim.

If you were in Myanmar, you'd be wearing the gaung paung, a long cotton scarf wrapped turban-fashion around the head. In Cambodia, the gaung paung is called the kroma. In Indonesia, the traditional headgear is the blangkon, a batik turban-shaped cap with raised sides.

Answer: Queen Mary, wife of King George V

Queen Mary affected the velvet toque and wore the style long after the teens and 1920s, when it was in fashion. It was rumoured among anti-monarchists that Queen Mary never threw anything away and was a bit of a pinchpenny, so she probably recycled her hats. I prefer to think that she was bowing to the convention that the females of British royalty do not wear hats that obscure their faces.

One of my enduring images of Queen Mary is the photograph taken of her with Queen Elizabeth the Queen-Mother and Queen Elizabeth II at the funeral of King George VI. Queen Mary is wearing her usual toque, this time in black velvet with a black veil over it. I also get a kick out of the story that circulated in 1947 when then-Princess Elizabeth married Philip, the newly-created Duke of Edinburgh. It was said that Queen Mary had saved up all her clothing coupons during the war so that the princess could have a wedding dress fit for, well, a princess!

Answer: Pakul

The pakul, woven from either sheep or goat wool, has been worn by men in Afghanistan from time immemorial, and since the 1980s westerners have tended to associate it with the Mujahideen who fought against the Russian invasion (they were heroes back then; not so much since they morphed into the Taliban).

The kippah, also known as the yarmulke, is the skull cap worn by Orthodox and Conservative Jewish men, and both the kepi and the shako are military headgear. Both have hard flat-topped crowns and small peak. The shako is taller than the kepi and has a stiff, brush-like plume attached above the peak.

Kepis are also worn by French gendarmes and the kepi with a cloth flap to protect the neck was worn by members of the French Foreign Legion.