Crowning Glory: A Guide to the Baseball Cap 

The baseball cap is perhaps the most democratic piece of clothing ever made. From the dugouts of 19th-century Brooklyn to the front rows of Paris Fashion Week, from dusty rural garages to the showrooms of Savile Row, few items have travelled so far while changing so little in form. Like the Oxford shirt or denim jeans, the baseball cap is one of those rare examples of American design that began as purely functional and became, almost incidentally, iconic. But before it was a symbol of casual cool or cultural allegiance, it was just a practical solution to a basic problem: sunlight. 

The earliest mention of something resembling a baseball cap appears in 1849, when the New York Knickerbockers (one of the first organised baseball clubs) wore straw hats during games. Not exactly high performance, but they did the job. Other teams of the era opted for flannel caps with flat tops and short brims. There was no uniformity yet; different teams had different styles, some looking more like jockey hats or even tam o’shanters than anything we’d recognise today. 

The true progenitor of the modern baseball cap was worn by the Brooklyn Excelsiors in 1860. It featured a rounded crown and a long, curved peak, specifically designed to shield a player’s eyes from the sun. This “Brooklyn-style” cap gradually caught on, and by the turn of the 20th century, it had become the de facto design for baseball teams across the United States. Function dictated form. Then soon enough, form led fashion. 

In 1934, the New Era Cap Company, then a small, family business in Buffalo, began producing caps for the Cleveland Indians. Their design would eventually evolve into the now-iconic 59FIFTY: a six-panel crown with a reinforced front, stitched eyelets, and a stiff visor. It was fitted rather than adjustable, structured and symmetrical, a style still worn on every Major League Baseball field to this day. 

It wasn’t just a hit with players. From there, the cap leapt into wider culture. By the 1970s and ’80s, fans were buying them too, and team logos, once modestly rendered, grew bolder and more graphic. The cap had become a badge of loyalty, a form of non-verbal shorthand for where you were from, who you supported, and what you believed in.  

That same period saw the baseball cap make its leap from sportswear to streetwear. Think Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. with a Detroit Tigers cap. Or Spike Lee, who famously commissioned New Era to make a red Yankees cap in the '90s, scandalous at the time, and now the stuff of streetwear lore. The cap became a form of expression. Political (Barack Obama wore one while campaigning). Artistic (Andy Warhol painted one). Rebellious (NWA made the LA Raiders cap their own). Effortless and universal, the cap became a statement as well as a functional bit of kit.  

By the early 2000s, the baseball cap had become an American export as familiar and universal as Coca-Cola or Levi’s. You could spot one on a child in Tokyo, a grandparent in Oslo, a construction worker in Cairo, or an art director in Hackney. It transcended style tribes and subcultures. Skaters wore them low and flat. Designers wore them backwards in ateliers. Minimalists opted for blank versions in muted tones, while collectors hunted rare editions. There’s even a body of niche scholarship devoted to the caps worn by American film directors: Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas et al. 

And then there are the souvenir caps, the ones you pick up on a trip, at a petrol station, or from a market stall near the beach. Not team-affiliated, not part of any collection, just something simple with Martha’s Vineyard or Nürburgring or Somewhere in Tokyo stitched across the front. Often sun-faded, they carry memories better than most things you can wear, postcards you can put on your head. 

Unlike other forms of headwear such as the trilby, the fedora and the beret, the baseball cap never really slipped into irony, didn’t become old fashioned. It has always remained stubbornly sincere, even when stylised. It has always felt democratic. You don’t need to know about baseball to wear one. It’s a shape, a silhouette, an attitude, worn by people who build houses, write novels, or just want to cover up a bald spot or a bad hair day. 

As with all our designs, we’re interested in garments and accessories that earn their place, that do their job, that pick up character and improve with age. The baseball cap fits the bill, pun very much intended. 

We have been producing our own versions for years now, often in limited runs, cut in soft needlecord or brushed cotton twill, garment-dyed for depth of colour, always built to last, and stitched with minimal branding: a subtle monogram here, an embroidered motif there, nothing too shouty. We think of them as the final, slightly rakish touch to an outfit. A way of dressing down a tailored jacket or softening the formality of a shirt and tie. 

It’s a cap with range, after all. The only piece of clothing that makes equal sense on the mound and on the Mayfair pavement. Proof, perhaps, that the simplest things often go the furthest.