A tall, cone-shaped headdress for women called a hennin comes into vogue; it's described by writer Colin McDowell as "one of the most bizarre and impractical items of dress ever created.”

The first record of the term milliner, which derived from Millaners – people who imported fine straw hats made in the Milan region of Northern Italy.

While womens’ headdresses were merely variations on hoods, kerchiefs and caps for centuries, men were peacocks, by comparison.

The cavalier, a big-brimmed hat dripping with feathers and were impractical for riding, so gentlemen gradually adopted the tricorne, or "cocked" hat. The style was copied by the lower classes.

These stove pipe hats were made of silk, beaver fur, oilcloth, you name it. They were popular for more than 100 years, and were still regularly worn into the 20th century.

John B. Stetson bought $10 worth of fur and founded his eponymous hat company in Texas. A year later, the iconic "Boss of the Plains" hat was born.

Women come into their own, and “the art of millinery is pushed to its outermost limits,” author Colin McDowell says. By 1910, most hats are enormous and are festooned with feathers, silk flowers, waxed satin ribbon and tulle.

Before World War II, it was a rare woman or man who would leave the house without a hat, but that trend began to wane after the war.

Halston started working as a milliner at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, where one of his most loyal customers was Jackie Kennedy. He took the pillbox hat first worn by Greta Garbo in the 1930s and redesigned it for Kennedy, who made it a style icon. Fact: Halston's head was the same size as Kennedy's, so he tried on the hats he created for her before shipping to make sure they fit.

By the early 1960s, hats had fallen out of favor and stylish women turned to hairdressers as the creators of headdress.

After two difficult decades, hats started coming back, thanks to Princess Diana, who favored the chic designs of John Boyd.

Hats play a starring role in the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, an event that brought the “fascinator” into common parlance. British milliner Philip Treacy created dozens of the cross between a hat and a hairpiece for the wedding, and Princess Beatrice’s taupe-colored, ribbony example became an Internet punch line. Sales of fascinators soared.