Gladwin Bond leather pork pie hat Apork pie hat is one of several different styles of hat that have been popular in one context or another since the mid-19th century, The first hat to be called a pork pie was a hat worn primarily by British and American women from around 1830 through to about 1865 The pork pie began to appear in Britain as a man's hat not long after the turn of the century in the fashion style of theman-about-town, but its resurgence in the United States in the 1920s is credited to the silent film actorBuster Keaton who wore them in many of his films.