Casci Ritchie is a writer, film programmer, and PhD researcher studying Prince, fashion, and fandom at Northumbria University. She holds a BA Hons in Fashion Design, an MA in Fashion Body Wear, and an MLitt in Dress and Textile Histories. Research interests include fashion in film and music, consumption, identities, and fandom. Her chapter on the origins of Prince’s trench coat was published within Prince and Popular Music: Critical Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Life and recent journal articles include: “Fashioning Prince: Biking briefs, trench coat, and zoot suits, 1978-91” in Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion and “Prince the Provocateur: The Disruption of Masculinities through the Style of Prince Rogers Nelson” in Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture. Her book, On His Royal Badness: The Life and Legacy of Prince’s Fashion, was published in 2021 as part of 404 Ink’s Inkling series.

Throughout his career, Prince wore many hats: bowlers, fedoras, panamas, homburgs, beanies, top hats – to name a few; but no chapeau remains as notorious as the chain hat. In typical Prince fashion, the chain hat represents duality. First worn in the “Violet the Organ Grinder” music video, the chain hat was an indicator of Prince’s life-long interest in BDSM imagery, dressing him as the ornate, pleasure-seeking “other.” A year later, Prince explodes on screen, donning the chain hat once more, this time posing as the gilded renegade leader in the “My Name is Prince” music video. The chain hat no longer feels sexually suggestive nor submissive; instead, when worn alongside the riot-ravaged streets of Minneapolis, the hat feels revolutionary.

This paper will explore the chain hat’s origins and materiality and will discuss the hat’s role in the re-fashioning of O(+> in the early-mid 1990s and the accessory’s lasting legacy within Prince fandom. Focusing on the “My Name is Prince” music video, Herb Ritts photoshoot and live performances during Act I and Act II tours, the chain hat will be celebrated as a sartorial tool of masquerade, revolution, and iconography within popular culture.