Lock & Co. Coke

The Coke is a hard hat of black felt: a round dome about ten centimetres high above a narrow brim that curls up at the sides. Inside it is fully lined, with a leather sweatband, and the felt is stiffened so that the crown keeps its shape under a knock. Everywhere else it is called the bowler. At Lock & Co., which first sold it, it has always been the Coke, after the man who ordered it.

That man was Edward Coke, younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Leicester. His gamekeepers at Holkham Hall in Norfolk wore top hats, which were knocked off and crushed by low branches as they rode the estate. In 1849 Coke asked Lock for something close-fitting, low and hard. Lock passed the commission to Thomas and William Bowler, hatmakers who supplied the shop, and on 17 December Coke came to London to collect the result. By the shop's account he put it on the floor, stamped on it twice, found it unharmed, and paid twelve shillings.

The hat outgrew its purpose quickly. It became the everyday hat of the Victorian working man, then the hat of the American West, worn by railwaymen and cowboys and by Butch Cassidy and Billy the Kid, and by the early twentieth century the uniform of the City of London, where it lasted until the 1970s. The Bowlers' name travelled with it. Coke's stayed in St James's.

Lock & Co. still sells it from No. 6 St James's Street, where the firm has traded since 1765, and says it has been a staple of the range ever since. There is a Town Coke and an extra-firm version padded for wear on horseback, the job it was made for, and the shop still fits hard hats with a conformateur, a nineteenth-century device that records the shape of the head. The firm marked the hat's 175th anniversary in 2024, and the gamekeepers at Holkham still wear the hat.