70s Style Hats | What The Decade Actually Wore

70s style hats were soft, slouchy, and expressive — floppy wide-brim styles dominated women’s fashion, while men wore fedoras, bowlers, and bucket hats.

The decade traded the rigid, required dress hats of earlier eras for something looser and more personal. Soft felt floppy hats, oversized knitted berets, and relaxed fedoras all shared the spotlight. The thread running through every 70s hat was attitude — hats became a style statement rather than a social obligation.

The Defining Women’s Silhouette: The Floppy Hat

The floppy wide-brim hat defined 1970s women’s fashion more than any other headwear. Usually made from soft felt or straw with a very wide, drooping brim, it framed the face with a bohemian ease that matched the era’s trends. Ribbon trims were a common finishing touch.

Celebrities pushed the style into the mainstream. Faye Dunaway, Brigitte Bardot, Raquel Welch, Bianca Jagger, and Farrah Fawcett all wore floppy hats in ways that were photographed endlessly. The 1975 film The Stepford Wives featured the big floppy hat as part of its era-defining look, cementing its place in the decade’s visual identity. The silhouette was so closely tied to the hippie movement and its bohemian aesthetic that the two became nearly inseparable in fashion history.

Smaller soft styles also thrived. Close-fitting caps, oversized slouchy berets, and cloche-style hats — often knitted or crocheted by hand — rounded out the women’s hat wardrobe.

Men’s 70s Hats: Far More Than The Fedora

Men’s hat options in the 1970s were broader than many assume. London men in the early part of the decade still wore bowler hats, while American men reached for Western straw hats and leather or suede cowboy hats. Floppy velvet and velour hats, oversized newsboy caps, and homburgs all had their moments.

Knit berets, bucket hats, and revived fedoras rounded out the list. The fedora — especially the “Al Capone” or rude-boy style — came with its own wearing rule: tilt it at a slight angle. A 1979 fashion magazine explicitly recommended that hats “should be worn at a slant,” confirming the relaxed, off-kilter placement was the decade’s signature gesture.

Some 70s hat moments weren’t even hats in the traditional sense. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ black-and-gold baseball cap redesign in 1970 became one of the decade’s most notable MLB headwear examples, showing how even functional caps carried the era’s bolder color sense.

The 1970s Hat Wardrobe, At A Glance

This variety points to the deeper shift across the decade. Hats stopped being something you wore because you had to — they became something you chose to express yourself. The same hat could read as hippie, Hollywood glamour, or street-smart urban style depending on how it was worn.

How To Wear 70s Style Hats Today

Modern styling follows the same principle the decade used: wear the hat, don’t let it wear you. The slant rule from 1979 still works — tip a fedora or floppy hat slightly to one side rather than sitting it square on your head.

For women, a floppy wide-brim felt hat pairs naturally with long hair, bell-bottoms, and earthy tones. For men, a fedora with a slightly wider brim reads more authentically 1970s than the stingy-brim styles popular in other eras. The goal is relaxed, never costume-like.

If you’re looking for a modern reproduction of the decade’s best looks, our roundup of the top 70s hats worth buying today covers the styles that still carry the era’s effortless energy.

One final note on accuracy: because “70s style hats” is a broad fashion category rather than a standardized product line, no authoritative source lists current retail prices or model numbers. The historical record from sources like The Gentleman’s Gazette’s history of men’s hats and fashion retrospectives confirms the styles themselves, but specific modern prices depend entirely on the maker and material you choose.