Ep.5: The Coppola Cap

In fashion as in cinema, the flat cap has now become one of the symbols of Sicily. Yet, this cap isn’t even originally Italian - it’s British instead. Guido Bonsaver, professor at Oxford, and Rebecca Bauman, associate professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, discuss the history and representations of the flat cap, starting from the 16th century and reaching up to contemporary television series. The Academy Award winning director Giuseppe Tornatore takes us back to his Sicilian roots and finds there itinerant hat sellers, peasants and aristocrats. Then he explains that for him, as for Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, tradition is always an inspiration, never a constraint.