You will not believe what are the reasons why wool hats have pompoms

Have you ever wondered why wool hats have pompoms and where did they come from?

It turns out that this is not just a cute fashion addition - but an item that split classes and aided military forces.

The pompom throughout history

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04/01/2022

Tuesday, 04 January 2022, 23:35 Updated: 23:41

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The color illusion of the wool hat (@oteliacarmen)

The winter season brings with it many questions, wonders and struggles, so here we help you solve one that must have bothered you -.

Why does everyone have a pompom on their hat as if it were a regular and normative decoration?

Did you know that the pompoms that adorn our wool hats have not always been used for decorative purposes?

You can actually date pompoms up to the Viking Age - and they performed a number of important functions over the years.

So where did the pompoms (or fiff as they have been called in Hebrew since the Mishnah) come from?

Their earliest roots were found in a statue found on a farm in Sweden in 1904.

This is an ancient statue (dating to more than a thousand years ago) of the Viking god Fry, associated with fertility and agriculture, on whose hat or helmet appears a pompom (the statue incidentally also had an erect penis, but that is not the subject at the moment).

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This is the first pompom

There were also pompoms outside Scandinavia, when in quite a few European countries the pompom on the hat indicated what social class you belonged to. At the same time, in South America, traditional clothes for men and women alike were decorated with pompoms of different colors as a way to mark their marital status.

Clergy in Rome wore a hat called a beret with pompoms of different colors - depending on their role. In Scotland they were used by military forces like the Scottish Highland Battalions and Napoleon's Infantry, where the color of the pompom determined which platoon the soldier belonged to - green for the first platoon, light blue for the second, orange for the third platoon, and purple for the fourth platoon. In fact the origin of the word pompom is from the French word pompon, which describes a small decorative ball made of cloth or feathers.

Outline reports that a number of experts believe the pompoms on the soldiers' uniforms also helped provide them with protection from the harsh weather conditions and also helped associate the bodies of soldiers found on the battlefield with the battalion to which they belonged.

Napoleon's army had very impressive pompoms (Photo: ShutterStock, Luka Dakskobler)

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There is another reason you may have thought of before - the pompoms also helped protect the head so sailors used to wear hats with a pompom so that they would not knock their head and take a hit when bending in the lower parts of the ship.

But why did we stay with them? (Photo: Giphy)

But why are there pompoms on the wool hats even today?

According to this post on Martha Stewart's website, pompoms experienced a significant increase in popularity during the Great Depression (in the 1930s) because adding pompoms was a cheap way to beautify clothes and add some style to the outfit - which can be made from wool scraps.

At the same time, paper pompoms popped up at high school dance parties as easy and inexpensive decorations to make and in the hands of cheerleaders as a fun substitute for batons.

The Americans fell in love with the playfulness of the pompon - and that enthusiasm remains to this day.

Mike Nismith of the Monkeys and the Pompon:

Some also believe that celebrities like Mike Nismith of the Monkeys have helped the popularity of this fashion item.

The band member wore the item during the band's TV show that aired in the '60s, which may have prompted others to act accordingly.

So here, now you know that pompoms have stood the test of time and were used in the past as much more than just a fashionable item.

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