Original British Victorian Lord Lieutenant’s Cocked Chapeau de Bras Bicorne Hat – Circa 1830-1840 Original Items

Original Item. Only One Available. This is an absolutely stunning example of a British Victorian Era Lord Lieutenant’s Chapeau Bicorne hat. It features a button with a Queen’s crown & a black cockade. This example dates between 1830 and 1840.

This large black felt British cocked Bicorne hat dates to the Victorian Era, and retains both of its bullion tassels on each end, sewn in through the bottom of the chapeau as shown. The style is that for a Lord/Lieutenant. It has silver tape protruding from the top and folds near the bottom, held in place by a brass Queen’s crown button. Under the tape is a gorgeous black cockade which is heavily fraying as shown.
The interior of the chapeau has a red-silken lining which is still intact at the crown, but the silk around the bottom is mostly gone. There are some cracks in the body as shown, but the majority of the fur on the inside of the bicorne is intact and looks beautiful. This is a very difficult piece of headgear to find, and would look amazing displayed on a mannequin head. Comes ready for further research and display.

The Bicorne
The bicorne or bicorn (two-cornered) is a historical form of hat widely adopted in the 1790s as an item of uniform by European and American army and naval officers. Most generals and staff officers of the Napoleonic period wore bicornes, which survived as widely-worn full-dress headdress until the 20th century.

Descended from the tricorne, the black-coloured bicorne originally had a rather broad brim, with the front and the rear halves turned up and pinned together forming a semi-circular fan shape; there was usually a cockade in the national colours at the front. Later, the hat became more triangular in shape, with its two ends becoming more pointed, and it was worn with the cockade at the right side. That kind of bicorne eventually became known in English as the cocked hat, but it is still known in French as the bicorne.
Worn in the side-to-side athwart style during the 1790s, the bicorne became normally seen fore-and-aft in most armies and navies from 1800. The change in style coincided with the flattening out of the pronounced front peak of the original headdress. The French gendarmerie continued to wear their bicornes in the classic side-to-side fashion until about 1904, and the Italian Carabinieri still do so in their modern full dress.
Some forms of bicorne were designed to be folded flat so that they could be conveniently tucked under the arm when they were not being worn. A bicorne of such a style is also known as a chapeau-bras or chapeau-de-bras.
The bicorne was widely worn until World War I as part of the full dress of officers of most of the world’s navies. It survived to a more limited extent between the wars for wear by senior officers in the British, French, US, Japanese and other navies until World War II but has now almost disappeared in that context.
It was also worn during the 19th and the early 20th centuries by civilian officials in European monarchies and Japan when required to wear uniforms on formal occasions. The practice generally ceased after World War I except in the context of diplomatic uniform. British colonial governors in temperate climates and governors general in some countries of the Commonwealth (notably Australia, Canada and New Zealand) continued to wear bicornes with ceremonial dress until the second half of the 20th century.