Comfort or attractive appearance?
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When asked what headgear Napoleon wore, every student answers “a dumpling-shaped hat”. It was the so-called bicorn,
a type of headgear very common in the army and navy in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and North America. A bicorn is usually associated with Napoleonic times and the French Emperor himself. Bicorns were worn by officers and generals in Napoleon’s day and were used as an element of the formal uniform by many armies till the 1920s. They were also part of ceremonial dress of officers of Polish Navy in the interwar period. Some bicorns were made in such a way that they could be folded flat and put under the arm; they are the so-called chapeau-bras or chapeau-de-bras. In Poland bicorns were also quite popular; they were worn in the day of the Kosciuszko Uprising and later by officers of the army of the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland. We can see officers in bicorns on water-colours made by Jan Paweł Lelewel, representing restructuring of Zamość Fortress as well as its military crew in the 1820s and 1830s.
