The English Baker Boy Cap, also known as the Newsboy Cap in the States, is a casual-wear cap with a wide, round crown, often made of eight panels, stitched together with a button on the top. The cap’s size is measured in inches: 9, 10, 11 and 12 inches in diameter.
Also referred to as the Baker Boy, Apple Cap, Eight Panel 8-piece, Gatsby (after The Great Gatsby), and similarly know as a Redford Cap, it is the same basic style as a Brooklyn Cap, but with a rounder crown.
The style, very similar to a Beret, or the medieval Bonnet, was popular in Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among both boys and adult men. As the name suggests, it became associated with Newspaper sellers, or newsboy, and baker boys who made deliveries on their bikes around London and New York.
Today, the Baker Boy Cap comes in a variety of sizes, but the modern cap silhouette originated in the working guilds. An apprentice would join a guild and wear a small Baker Boy cap. As they rose through the ranks, their cap size would increase until they became a Master Baker, who was allowed to wear the largest size of cap.
In the 1920’s, the cap was adopted by foppish golfers like Bertie Wooster and the ‘Cambridge Set’ in their plus fours.
Although traditionally a man's cap, it has been popular in various forms since the 1960’s, with a much larger, floppy head and longer peak, present in famous shoots of Twiggy wearing a variation of the basic style in the swinging sixties.
It was then made popular by the Great Gatsby, as worn by Robert Redford, and both became synonym in name to the cap.
Of late, the Baker Boy cap is associated with the iconic Peaky Blinder’s Cap, worn by Thomas Shelby and his gang, famous for wearing razor blades in the cap brim and used as an unlikely weapon. Peaky Blinders has elevated the Baker Boy Cap to the most in demand style at the moment, thanks to the Shelby Lads and “by order of the Peaky Blinders”.
