MS KNOW-IT-ALL

Why Bolivian women wear British bowler hats made for men.

Bolivian women are famous for wearing bowler

hats with their stunning traditional dress. How did this come to be? How did an object as arcane as the black hat come to be so widely taken up in a country halfway across the world?

The answer is actually quite simple.

A couple of years ago, chickens made headlines in South Africa. Not just any chickens. South American chickens. Local chicken producers were fuming over the fact that South American producers were “dumping” their cheaper (and, they said, lower quality) frozen poultry products in the South African market, forcing local producers between a rock and a hard place. At the time, I was astounded that this was going on. That a surplus of product in one country could be “dumped” on another country that actually doesn’t need it, thank you very much, potentially rocking an entire sector of the economy. And then I learnt about the history of bowler hats in Bolivia (and a few other South American countries).

Basically what happened was that a company in England that manufactured hats sent a consignment of bowler hats over to South America for the British railway workers there. But when the guys got their headgear, it was found to be way too small. (How a hat company could get this wrong, I don’t know. Did they think railway workers somehow have smaller head circumferences?) So the hats were stuck in South America, unsold. Aha! Now here comes a great idea! Why not convince the locals to buy them? And that’s what they did.

Lucky for them, the hats were enthusiastically taken up by the women and now it seems that the hats are so much a part of Bolivian culture, one could easily assume it’s always been there. But it was all down to one sly sales person who managed to push a product onto a new market.

As to why it seems to be only the women wearing the hats, that I can’t tell you. Next time you’re in South America, ask them for me, won’t you?