By the end of the century, many other styles were introduced, among them hats with wide brims and flat crowns, the flower pot and the toque. In the first half of the 19th century, women wore bonnets that gradually became larger, decorated with ribbons, flowers, feathers, and gauze trims. Left-to-right: Top-hat, peaked cap, Borsalino, bowler hat (Sweden, early 20th century). The hats were usually yellow and were either pointed or square. The 1215 Fourth Council of the Lateran required that all Jews identify themselves by wearing the Judenhat ('Jewish hat'), marking them as targets for anti-Semitism. In the Middle Ages, hats were a marker of social status and used to single out certain groups. Clement, the patron saint of felt hatmakers, is said to have discovered felt when he filled his sandals with flax fibers to protect his feet, around 800 AD.

He wore a pointed cap made of sheepskin and wool, fastened under the chin by a hide thong. Like Г–tzi, the Tollund Man was preserved to the present day with a hat on, probably having died around 400 BC in a Danish bog, which mummified him. Women wore veils, kerchiefs, hoods, caps and wimples. Other early hats include the Pileus, a simple skull-like cap the Phrygian cap, worn by freed slaves in Greece and Rome (which became iconic in America during the Revolutionary War and the French Revolution, as a symbol of the struggle for liberty against the Monarchy) and the Greek petasos, the first known hat with a brim. Hats as an indicator of social status: a foreman (with horse) wears a hat of greater height than the accompanying inquilino (19th-century Chile). Ancient Mesopotamians often wore conical hats or ones shaped somewhat like an inverted vase. Many upper-class Egyptians shaved their heads, then covered it in a headdress intended to help them keep cool. Hats were commonly worn in ancient Egypt. One of the first pictorial depictions of a hat appears in a tomb painting from Thebes, Egypt, which shows a man wearing a conical straw hat, dated to around 3200 BC. He was found wearing a bearskin cap with a chin strap, made of several hides stitched together, essentially resembling a Russian fur hat without the flaps. One of the earliest known confirmed hats was worn by a Bronze Age man (nicknamed Г–tzi) whose body (including his hat) was found frozen in a mountain between Austria and Italy, where he had been since around 3250 BC. The 27,000-to-30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf figurine may depict a woman wearing a woven hat. While there are not many official records of hats before 3,000 BC, they probably were commonplace before that. The 27,000-to-30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf may depict a woman wearing a woven hat.

Some hats have religious functions, such as the mitres worn by Bishops and the turban worn by Sikhs. Some hats are worn by members of a certain profession, such as the Toque worn by chefs. Some hats are worn for ceremonial purposes, such as the mortarboard, which is worn (or carried) during university graduation ceremonies. As examples, the hard hat protects construction workers' heads from injury by falling objects, a British police Custodian helmet protects the officer's head, a sun hat shades the face and shoulders from the sun, a cowboy hat protects against sun and rain and an ushanka fur hat with fold-down earflaps keeps the head and ears warm. Police typically wear distinctive hats such as peaked caps or brimmed hats, such as those worn by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In the military, hats may denote nationality, branch of service, rank or regiment. In the past, hats were an indicator of social status. Woman in a Flowered Hat (1889), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Straw hat with brim decorated with cloth flowers and ribbonsДЄ hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory.

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