What Is a Hatpin?

A hatpin is a long, decoratively headed pin used to anchor a hat securely to the hair or to another layer of headwear, made both as a plain practical fastening and as a genuine piece of jewellery.

What Is a Hatpin?

A hatpin consists of a long, rigid shaft, sharpened to a point at one end, and a decorative head at the other, sized and weighted to hold a hat firmly in place against a full head of hair. While the shaft’s job is purely functional, the head could be treated as an object of real jewellery-making skill, set with gemstones, enamelled, or shaped into a novelty form, ranging from a modest bead to a substantial decorative sphere.

How to Recognise It

Look at the shaft length first - a genuine period hatpin is typically considerably longer than a modern decorative pin, often several inches, since it needed to pass through a substantial hat brim, the hair beneath it, and out the other side. The head’s construction is also telling: a well-made antique hatpin head is usually securely fixed to the shaft with a threaded or soldered fitting, rather than simply glued, and may show wear consistent with decades of insertion and removal.

When Was It Worn?

Hatpins were essential, everyday items whenever a hat was worn, and became particularly indispensable from the later Victorian period through the 1910s, when large, wide-brimmed and elaborately trimmed hats needed real anchoring to stay in place.

Origins

Pins used to secure clothing and headwear are ancient, but the hatpin as a distinct fashion accessory, sold and collected specifically for its decorative head, developed alongside the increasingly large and elaborate hat styles of the second half of the 19th century.

How It Changed Over Time

Earlier Victorian hatpins tended to be relatively simple, with plain or modestly decorated heads suited to smaller hat styles. As hats grew larger and more elaborate from the 1880s onward, hatpin heads grew correspondingly more decorative and more numerous - a fashionable woman might own many, in different lengths and finishes to suit different hats. The form reached its peak of both size and decorative variety in the Edwardian period and the years leading up to the First World War, when very large hats were at their most fashionable, before hatpins declined sharply alongside the smaller, closer-fitting hats that became fashionable from the later 1910s onward.

Materials

Gold and silver were used for finer hatpin heads, sometimes set with gemstones or finished in enamel, while cut steel, paste and inexpensive base metals were common for mass-produced examples. Novelty heads were made in an especially wide range of materials, including painted porcelain, glass and moulded compositions, reflecting the sheer scale of production once hatpins became a mass-market accessory.

Construction

The shaft was typically drawn steel wire, sharpened at one end, with the decorative head fixed at the other by a threaded cap, a soldered mount, or a simple ball or disc of metal, glass or another material pierced and fixed onto the shaft. Because the shaft itself was rarely decorative, most of a hatpin’s craftsmanship and value lay in the head.

How It Was Worn

Pushed through the hat, the hair beneath it and out the far side of the hat, often at an angle, so the pin gripped the hair as well as the hat; a securely worn hat commonly used two or more hatpins positioned at different angles.

Who Wore It?

Hatpins were worn by women, essentially universally, wherever a hat needed securing, across every level of society, with the material and decoration of the head varying accordingly from plain steel to fine gold and gemstones.

Notable Variations

• Novelty hatpin - a head shaped as a figure, animal, or topical motif, popular as an affordable, characterful accessory.
• Mourning hatpin - a hatpin in black materials such as jet or vulcanite, worn to match mourning dress.
• Souvenir hatpin - a head commemorating a place, event or exhibition, often mass-produced and inexpensively made.

Terminology

“Hatpin” is sometimes used loosely for any long decorative pin, including some that were actually stickpins for men’s neckwear rather than hatpins proper; overall length and the presence of a substantial protective point are useful, though not absolute, distinguishing features.

A Note on Hatpins and Self-Defence

Alongside their practical fastening role, hatpins acquired a documented reputation in the late Victorian and Edwardian period as a means of self-defence, with contemporary press accounts describing women using a hatpin to fend off unwanted attention or assault in public. This concern was taken seriously enough that some municipalities in this period debated or introduced restrictions on hatpin length, framed at the time as a public safety measure. The episode is a genuine and often-cited part of the social history surrounding hatpins, though the extent and consistency of such restrictions varied by place and is best treated as a documented social phenomenon rather than a uniform legal history.

Similar Jewellery

Hatpins are sometimes confused with men’s stickpins or cravat pins, which serve a comparable fastening function on menswear but are generally shorter and lack the substantial protective point needed to pass safely through a hat and a full head of hair.

Examples in Museum Collections

• Hat pin, Charles Horner, 1907-08. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1990.246.1. Silver and enamel, from the Edwardian height of the hatpin’s popularity; Horner was one of the best-known British makers of hatpins.
• Archaeological-revival hat pin, Castellani, c.1880. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2015.406. A gold head on a steel shaft nearly 25 cm long - the fine-jewellery end of the range.
• Hat pin head, c.1910. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, T.33-1966. Enamelled gilt metal and paste, with a split-pin fixing, catalogued with separate shanks that have sockets for interchangeable heads.