Creating the hat of a hero.
Before hatmakers Herbert Johnson joined the Swaine Adeney Brigg group, it was situated at 13 Old Burlington Street in London. In 1980 two American gentlemen came into the shop and introduced themselves as Mr Steven Spielberg and Mr Harrison Ford.
Mr. Spielberg announced that he was on the brink of making an adventure film with Harrison Ford as the central figure (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and revealed that the main character Indiana Jones would be wearing a hat which would be pivotal to the character and the plot. Herbert Johnson was delighted at having been chosen to help design what was to become the famous iconic Indy hat.
It was our tall stovepipe classic poet style that was chosen as the foundation for what was to become the iconic raiders hat. The Poet is a wide brim fur felt hat with a tall straight sided crown, made by Herbert Johnson since the 1890’s and has always been deemed ageless. A shade of brown rabbit fur felt called ‘sable’ was chosen and some modifications were made to the poet hat to create its character & to facilitate filming.
The Indy hat was made distinctive by reducing the brim width only on the sides creating a dimensional brim. By shaping the brim into an ovoid, it gave protection to the eyes & neck whilst reducing the sides helped with camera angles. The explorer look was enhanced by snapping the front brim down and we altered the original ribbon from 50mm to 39mm to make the tall crown appear even taller.
The re-worked and subtly modified Herbert Johnson Poet hat gave Mr Spielberg the look he had envisioned for Harrison Ford's character of Indiana Jones and the 'Indy' hat was born.
Apart from the original Indiana Jones hat for Harrison Ford, we made a further 45 'Indy' hats of assorted sizes, some for Mr. Ford and the remainder for the film stunt actors on the set of Raiders of The Lost Ark. We were also commissioned to provide all the hats for the following 2 sequels.
The tremendous success of the Indiana Jones films have secured their place in popular culture forever and just like our original poet, the hero Indy Poet is ageless and enjoys an enduring popularity to this day.