Measuring for your head, hat and cap size, is both an art and a science. You can use a tape measure (or a length of string that you will have to hold up to a tape measure) to determine the length. Place the string or tape around your head about 1/8" (0.3 cm) above your ear, across the mid-forehead, completely circling your head. Hold the tape firmly, but not too tightly. Basically you need to measure your head exactly where the hat will sit. If your measurement falls between sizes, choose the next largest size.
Hats worn in the past, or rarely worn today (Source Wikipedia)
Men's
- Aar bonnet
- Anthony Eden hat
- Beaver
- Beefeaters' hat
- Bicorne
- Boater, also basher, skimmer
- Boss of the plains
- Bowler, also coke hat, billycock, boxer, bun hat, derby
- Bycoket
- Cabbage-tree hat a hat woven from leaves of the cabbage tree
- Capotain (and women) - a tall conical hat, 17th century, usually black - also, copotain, copatain
- Caroline - 17th Century
- Carriage hat - 1780s-1820s
- Caubeen - Irish hat
- Cavalier hat, also chevaliers, wide brimmed hat trimmed with ostrich plumes
- Chapeau-bras, also chapeau de bras - 18th to early-19th-century folding bicorne hat carried under one arm
- Chaperon A series of hats that evolved in 14th and 15th Century Europe from the medieval hood of the same name.
- Chimney-pot hat, also lum-hat, Victorian, also worn by clerics in the Greek Orthodox Church
- Cocked hat
- Deerstalker, hunting cap with fold-down ears, associated with Sherlock Holmes, Elmer Fudd, and Holden Caulfield.
- Fedora
- Fez
- Hats and headwear, ancient Chinese hats
- Homburg
- Kolpik
- Panama hat
- Papakha
- Peci
- Pith Helmet stereotypical Safari/Jungle Explorer Hat
- Pork pie
- Shtreimel
- Spodik
- Sombrero
- Sudra
- Tiara, a hat traditionally worn by the Pope, which has been abandoned in recent decades, in favor of the Mitre.
- Top hat, also stovepipe hat or (in collapsible form) gibus
- Tricorne
- Trilby
- Umbrella Hat
- Verbano English Cap
Women's
- Bandeau hat
- Beaver
- Beehive
- Bergère hat
- Bloomer
- Bongrace - a velvet-covered headdress, stiffened with buckram - 16th century
- Breton – originating in 19th-century France, a lightweight hat, usually in straw, with upturned brim all the way round.
- Capeline - 18th/19th century
- Capotain (and men) - a tall conical hat, 17th century, usually black - also, copotain, copatain
- Cartwheel hat - low crown, wide stiff brim
- Cocktail hat
- Doll hat – a scaled-down hat, usually worn tilted forward on the head.
- Gainsborough hat - a very large hat often elaborately decorated with plumes, flowers, and trinkets.
- Half hat – a millinery design that only covers part of the head and may be stiffened fabric or straw.
- Hennin
- Kokoshnik
- Nón lá, Vietnam.
- Nón quai thao, Vietnam
- Ochipok
- Tantour