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Nolan’s Obsession with Oppenheimer’s Hat
Christopher Nolan took Oppenheimer’s hat way more seriously than you may expect. You’ll notice that almost nobody else in the film is wearing a hat, despite it being a time in society when everybody wore a hat. That is due to Nolan’s request. Due to its unique design, Ellen Mirojnick, the film’s costume designer, commissioned a hat maker to emulate Oppenheimer’s hat.
The first three expert hat makers she commissioned couldn’t get it right, but two months later, the fourth she commissioned did. Why is Oppenheimer’s hat almost impossible to identify and recreate? How are all of these hats made? Why are they able to last generations? And finally, what are the three things that caused hats to virtually fall off of everyone’s head after the atom bombs dropped?
What We’re Looking at Today
Today, we will be looking at the Stetson Royal Deluxe Open Road hat. It may not look like Oppenheimer’s hat, but it very well may be, and we’ll touch on that specific fact in a little bit. But this article is going to focus on three different things:
Number one: Why did Stetson, a company that started off as a literal joke between hunting buddies, become the most famous hat maker in the world? (You could put an asterisk next to that.)
Number two: This is not woven or knit. It’s probably not a fabric like you think of. It’s also not made of wool or cotton or anything like that. It’s made of a very specific animal. That animal was the key to a waterproof hat.
Three: Finally, after World War II, these hats just bombed in popularity (sorry for the pun). So why is that? It has to do with the war, of course, but it also has to do with cars. It also has to do with young people. It has to do with factories. It’s very fascinating stuff, but let’s get going.
The Goofy Beginning of Stetson Hats
John B. Stetson was hunting with a lot of his hunting buddies, and he was showing them how you can make cloth without weaving or knitting or anything like that – just going the old-school way. And he showed them by making a hat.
Mr. Stetson, being with his friends, was being a silly little goofy goober at the time, and the norm for hats back then was not that big – they were smaller, sleeker, and closer to your head. So Mr. Stetson made a comically large hat out of this material, and all of his friends laughed, and he was just kind of being a silly guy with all of his friends.
By the way, it should be said that this is the Stetson Legend – it may be a lie to sell more hats, but I’m going to believe it’s true because it’s a great story, especially the ending. So the story goes that as Mr. Stetson was being a little goofy goober with his friends, he started to notice: one, hey, it’s really convenient to have a very wide-brimmed hat when it’s raining outside because this hat is waterproof, so the water just beads off. That’s super convenient and also keeps the sun off my face.
And third, this little crown material at the top is actually awesome because of the snug fit around his head, and the extra material acts as a layer of insulation and creates a little air pocket above his head that either keeps him cool in the summer or keeps them warm in the winter. And he’s like, “Wait a minute, this is great!”
But then the grand finale of this story, which is my favorite, is this: as Mr. Stetson and his friends are walking around in the woods on their hunting trip, Mr. Stetson is obviously wearing a comically large hat when out of nowhere in the distance they spot a cowboy coming towards them on a horse.
This ragtag group of people, like I said, is probably standing there dumbfounded, watching a cowboy ride up to them. He stops in front of Mr. Stetson and says, “I’d like to buy that beautiful hat of yours for a five-dollar gold piece.” Mr. Stetson probably removes the hat, says, “I’d be delighted to sell it to you,” and gives it to him. And the Empire of Stetson Hats is then created.
The Evolution of an American Icon
That brings us to the Boss of the Plains hat, the first hat of this kind of DNA produced by Stetson that sold like wildfire. It’s not a hat that you’d probably recognize yet, but it has the DNA of a hat that Oppenheimer wore, which could also be the Open Road hat.
The Open Road could also technically be very close to the Boss of the Plains hat because of a vital thing that Stetson did to hats when he bought them.
The Boss of the Plains hat was introduced in the latter half of the 1800s, and looking at it, you’d probably say, “That’s not like an American icon or anything like that. I’ve seen it before, but I wouldn’t say it defines America,” and you’re kind of right. But the Open Road hat was introduced in 1937, and you would probably say that it is also not really an American icon.
You’d also be right – not really American icons, but circling an American icon. What was the hat that Stetson made that was an American icon? Well, it was the Boss of the Plains hat.
Why did you just tell me something else then? I told you something else because when you buy a hat from Stetson, for example, they will steam the hat to your liking, and when you steam a hat such as the Boss of the Plains if you leave an imprint on the hat while you are steaming it, it will hold that shape when it dries.
Comparing the Classic Stetson Styles
| Aspect | Stetson Royal Deluxe Open Road | Boss of the Plains | Oppenheimer’s Hat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Historical Significance | Introduced in 1937, known for its classic American style but not considered an icon. | First hat with this DNA, sold widely in the late 1800s, considered a key step in creating the iconic cowboy hat. | Associated with Oppenheimer, theorized to be inspired by or similar to the Boss of the Plains or Open Road but remains a mystery. |
| Material | Primarily modern blends of rabbit fur with other materials like mink, chinchilla, or cashmere. | Original versions used beaver fur, prized for its tight locking fibers. | Likely made of felted fur, possibly with Oppenheimer’s personal wear patterns affecting its appearance. |
| Design Features | Steamed into a shape with a wide brim and dimples for a sleek, polished look. | Plain, wide-brimmed hat that could be reshaped with steam into different forms, eventually leading to the cowboy hat design. | Unique due to personal wear and lack of maintenance; shows signs of heavy use and personalization by Oppenheimer. |
| Iconic Status | Recognized but overshadowed by more famous hat designs. | Considered the foundational design for American cowboy hats. | Iconic due to its association with Oppenheimer and its mysterious origins. |
| Decline in Popularity | Not specifically discussed but likely impacted by the general decline in hat usage post-WWII. | Became less popular due to shifts in technology, transportation, and casual fashion trends post-WWII. | Symbolic of the post-war decline in hat usage, partly due to cultural associations with the war and Oppenheimer himself. |
How Steam Changed Everything
So, if we look at the Boss of the Plains hat, nothing really special is going on – that’s just a hat. But if we steam it and we dimple or whatever they call it the top of the crown inwards like this, that’s kind of something recognizable.
And then if we have a very large brim and we steam the sides of that brim and we just tilt it up, all of a sudden, we have the most iconic American hat of all time: the cowboy hat, invented by Stetson.
Bringing all that together, we get to Oppenheimer’s hat, which a lot of people have tried to figure out, such as what brand the hat is, where he got it, etc. A lot of people theorize that he got it in New Mexico just because he really loves New Mexico, and that is where he would be using a hat like this, but truly, nobody knows for sure.
However, people’s best guess is that it’s either the Boss of the Plains hat or the Open Road hat, but it doesn’t look like either of those. So why does it look like that, and how can you get one like that yourself?
The Mystery of Oppenheimer’s Personal Hat
So Mr. Oppenheimer had a very interesting life because he grew up fabulously wealthy and had Picasso and Van Gogh paintings hanging in his house. Then he went to school and hated his teacher so much, supposedly, that he poisoned an apple and almost gave it to him. So he was a very interesting character, to say the least.
So you’d kind of expect his hat to also be interesting and not look like a regular Open Road or Boss of the Plains hat because Mr. Oppenheimer is wearing it.
Since he was such a fidgety guy, also known for chain-smoking cigarettes during his lectures and forgetting to eat for stretches at a time, he probably also fiddled with his hat a lot. So when he put it on, he was touching the brim a lot, getting that a little bent out of shape.
He was touching the crown a lot, wearing it in the rain, not steaming his hat and upkeeping it to make sure it looked new, and kind of just letting it go. And people say, looking at the hat from the top down, you can see that the little circle he made on the crown is from his hands pushing his hat back into place.
The Science Behind the Hat: It’s All About Felting
So that is Oppenheimer’s hat, but what exactly was it made out of that people went googoo gaga for? Hats of this time were not knitted together – it wasn’t like cloth or fabric, they weren’t woven together, and they didn’t feel like a t-shirt or anything like that.
It was actually fibers just very, very, very intensely mushed together to the point where when you first start making a hat, it’s very, very big, and then you mush those fibers, and you get them so densely packed together they become hat-sized. And that leads us to what you have probably already heard of before: felting.
So natural fibers are not perfectly smooth – they have all these little scales which you’ll see on shampoo commercials. They show the scales going away when you put conditioner on.
That’s because, essentially, they’re covering your hair in plastic, but either way, animal hairs have all of these little scales that act as hooks. So if you push them together very, very strongly, they stick together without any other force.
The Animal Kingdom of Hat Materials
In my felting research, I read an article about a woman who made a hat out of her own felted hair, which made me want to gag, but the point is, you can make felt out of essentially any animal’s hair or fur in the world. But not all animals’ hair can stack up to the legendary material that was used in Stetson.
But if we’re going up that ladder, you can make a hat out of sheep’s wool, which is not that great, and you can make a hat out of rabbit’s fur, which is kind of the modern alternative because the other fur is too expensive now. And rabbit’s fur is considered very, very good because the fibers lock together very, very tightly.
Nowadays, basically, everything is a blend, so no hats will be out of one animal. Stetson uses mink, chinchilla, and cashmere, and they have a rating system that has to do with the premier fur: beaver fur.
Beaver fur could lock together tighter than any other natural fur out there. It was the original fiber used when Stetson made his very first hat, and it obviously fell out of popularity because the price went up. The price went up because killing beavers for their furs and stuff like that went down.
Why Hats Disappeared from American Heads
So, what killed the popularity of these hats? Well, interestingly, as Oppenheimer was going to test the first bomb, everybody was standing obviously very far back from the bomb with their hats on, and when the bomb went off, it blew everybody’s hats off, and they looked around at each other and were like, “Hey Oppenheimer, you look pretty good!” That’s obviously not the answer, but the atomic bomb did technically blow the hats off of at least the American public and then eventually kind of the world.
One of the reasons that hats got less popular over time was because technology also changed over time, which meant people had different jobs and different ways of traveling. So now, if every day we’re getting in a car with a roof instead of getting to work in some other way, we don’t need a hat to stop the sun or to stop against rain or whatever. Our commute outside is much shorter, and our job may not be outside anymore – it may be inside at a factory.
The second reason, and also partially the third reason, is that style got way, way, way more casual when soldiers came home from war. They were now wearing t-shirts and jeans, and that was starting off with Marlon Brando and James Dean.
After the war, a very high percentage of all the hat wearers in the world just got back from the most traumatic period of time in their entire lives where they saw horrible things, and then when they flick on the TV when they get home, they see a guy that is commonly known to wear a hat saying “I am death, destroyer of worlds.” So hats got way, way, way less popular because it reminded soldiers of their time at war.
Watch This Review
A Modern Take on Classic Hats
After researching Stetson hats, I really want one just for utilitarian purposes. I don’t know if I can pull it off. My girlfriend Taylor wears a huge hat that I find pretty cute all the time, but who knows? Anyway, thanks for reading! I hope you are all well!
This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.
The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.