When you picture certain people, you automatically dress them in certain clothes.  Think about the dress-up box in your kindergarten classroom – all those uniforms.  Wearing a uniform helps people recognize what a person does.  But how did we come to associate mortarboards with graduating students, or those tall white hats with chefs and bakers, and so on?

The first police uniforms were created in London in 1829; the first US police uniform was established in New York in 1853.  Those outfits were basically dark, plain versions of what most people wore back then.  They originally wore top hats!  The flat, 8-pointed cap that we typically associate with policemen was in by the 1950′s.  Uniforms – especially those hats – allow officers to stand out in a crowd, and be easily recognized.  Nowadays, they’re usually reserved for formal occasions: modern police uniforms have evolved for practicality and current tastes, often allowing officers to wear baseball caps or even no hat at all.

The tall white chef‘s hat is called a toque, and it evolved in France during the 18th century.  They were invented and instituted by the world’s first celebrity chef, Marie-Antoine Carême.  The white color is for sanitary reasons (I guess because you can see stains, and it’s easily bleached), and the pleats are said to represent the number of ways to cook an egg; up to 101.  The height allows air to circulate around the head in a sweaty kitchen.

Back during the Renaissance, clergy, academics, and nobles wore flat-topped caps called birettas; they look something like a Chinese take-out container.  Over time, this flattened out and became the mortarboard worn by graduates all over.  Higher graduates these days often wear 8-cornered tams, or Tudor bonnets as a mark of distinction.  Back in the day, university professors wore academic regalia to work, not just for special ceremonies.

Baseball uniforms originally included straw hats, which soon evolved to visored wool caps.  By 1888, Spalding was advertising ten different baseball cap styles, some with rounded crowns and some with a flat-topped pillbox shape, in different color schemes; cheap ones cost only 15 cents, while good quality caps went for $2!  The Detroit Tigers were the first to put a team logo on the front, in 1901.  The benefit of a baseball cap is pretty obvious; sun protection.  It saves players from having to use their hands to shade their eyes, at least some of the time.  Plus, it makes the whole team look spiffier.  I’m not one to complain about a little extra spiff!