Sales of Felt Foldover Hats Surge under the Influence of “Oppenheimer” Worn by the Main Character in the Movie “Oppenheimer

Last Updated on 08/01/2023 by てんしょく飯

The film “Oppenheimer,” starring actor Cillian Murphy, has led to strong sales of felt fedoras, a type of foldover hat made of felt.

Cillian played the brutal gangster Thomas Shelby in the BBC drama “Peaky Blinders,” in which the hunting cap became popular.

The same effect seems to have been achieved in Christopher Nolan’s film about Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

At the British department store John Lewis, sales of the fedora worn by Cillian in the film are up 20% over hunting hats, and the hat specialty store Herbert Johnson reports that young customers are now buying fedoras.

Ellen Mirojnick, who designed the costumes for the film, believed that Oppenheimer had acquired the iconic hat in New Mexico and asked hatmakers to create a replica of it, but the first three craftsmen were unable to produce what they themselves wanted.

Ellen says she was unable to locate the original hat worn by Oppenheimer himself, but she has obtained photographs taken at Princeton University and at the Los Alamos laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed, and she points out that the actual hat was not technically a fedora because the crown was flat, not indented. He points out that the actual hat was not strictly a fedora because the crown was flat and not indented.