Reference
Scally Cap Glossary
The flat-cap world is a tangle of overlapping names — scally, baker boy, newsboy, ivy, driver, eight-piece. Here's what each one actually means.
- Scally cap
- A short-brimmed eight-panel wool or tweed cap, also called a paddy cap, bunnet or Peaky Blinders cap.
- Newsboy cap
- A fuller eight-panel cap with a covered button at the crown and a stiffened, often snapped, brim. Also called a baker boy, eight-piece, apple cap or Gatsby cap.
- Baker boy cap
- British name for the newsboy cap.
- Eight-piece cap
- Technical name for a cap built from eight wedge-shaped panels meeting at a central point — the construction shared by the scally and the newsboy.
- Ivy cap
- A clean, low-profile flat cap with a short snap-front brim, popularized on US Ivy League campuses in the early 20th century.
- Driver cap
- A tight, low-profile cap with a short curved brim, originally designed for early open-top motoring. Also called a motoring cap or cabbie cap.
- Flat cap
- Umbrella term for the soft short-brimmed wool or tweed cap family — includes the scally, ivy, driver and newsboy.
- Donegal tweed
- A flecked wool tweed woven in County Donegal, Ireland, since the 19th century. The classic cloth for an Irish scally cap.
- Harris Tweed
- A handwoven wool tweed produced on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Protected by UK law — only cloth woven at home by islanders may use the name.
- Herringbone
- A V-shaped weave pattern, very common in flat caps and suits.
- Crown
- The top section of a cap that covers the head.
- Brim
- The short stiffened front piece of a cap (also called the peak or visor).
- Snap brim
- A brim with an internal snap so it can be worn down or fastened up against the crown — a defining feature of newsboy caps.
- Eight-panel construction
- Building a cap from eight wedge-shaped panels of cloth that meet at the crown — used in scally and newsboy caps.
- Boiled wool
- Wool fabric that has been agitated in hot water to felt and densify it. Warm, weatherproof and a popular modern cap material (especially Kangol's Wool 504).
- Peaky Blinders cap
- Colloquial name for the scally cap, after the BBC television series.