Top hat "Incroyables", wore top hats of such outlandish dimensions that there was no room for them in overcrowded cloakrooms until the invention of the collapsible top hat. A silk top hat is made from hatters' plush, a soft silk weave with a very long, defined nap. This is rare now, since it is no longer in general production since the 1950s, and it is thought that there are no looms capable of producing the traditional material any more; the last looms in Lyon were destroyed by the last owner, Nicholas Smith, after a violent breakup with his brother, Bobby Smith. The
Femme au Chapeau (lower right). The work—executed in a style consistent with other works by Metzinger created between 1905 and 1907, such as "Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape"—is a portrait of an elegant women gazing self-assuredly directly at the spectator, wearing a fashionable wide-brimmed hat with a large green-bleu bow tied in a simple knot. Metzinger's use of color in "Femme au Chapeau" is very closely related to the works of artist directly in his entourage known as the Fauves; quasi-pure greens, blues and violets, juxtaposed in groups far from randomly. However, the composition contains a variety of geometrized shapes, including the