Pith Helmet Making Last Stand as Fashion Headgear in Zimbabwe

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe —  Once upon a time in colonial Africa, no white man would have dreamed of stepping outside into the noonday sun without his pith helmet.

The white man was swept away by the post-colonial wind of change, but the pith helmet has survived and is getting a new lease of life as a fashion accessory.

“Young black Zimbabweans seem to like the jungle look. And we also made one for (Britain’s) Prince Charles,” said Gibson Ndlovu, production manager at a tiny factory that claims to be the last one anywhere still making helmets the traditional way.

Elsewhere in Asia and Africa, sun helmets are mass-produced, mostly in injection-molded polystyrene. Here in Bulawayo, industrial progress has passed by unnoticed, leaving the factory with a unique product.

The entire process is done by hand and each hat takes up to three hours to make.

“Mass production is a long way away,” said Ndlovu. “We make about 35 a day and about half are sold in Zimbabwe.”

Other export markets are Kenya, Australia and South Africa, where tourists seeking the authentic colonial look buy helmets made in Bulawayo.

Sheets of thin Portuguese cork and drill cloth are glued, shaped and trimmed over traditional wooden blocks. Women sew on the trimmings and the leather straps. “We haven’t shortened anything and we stick to the tradition,” said Ndlovu.

The pith helmet or solar topee began its life in British India in the 1880s. By the time it spread to Africa, cork had replaced pith (too soggy in the rainy season) as the main ingredient.

Its heyday ended in World War II, as Nigerian colonial veteran Philip Allison recalled in Charles Allen’s 1981 book of reminiscences “Tales from the Dark Continent.”

“Many people religiously put their topees on before they went out to relieve themselves in the garden. But during the war, when British soldiers came out and walked about bareheaded and nothing terrible happened to them, people realized at last that nobody ever really suffered from sunstroke.

“What they’d been suffering from was heat-stroke--due to wearing a heavy helmet for one thing, no doubt.”

Gibson Ndlovu doesn’t actually wear a helmet to work, but insists that they are comfortable. “I haven’t heard of any complaints of headaches.”

Now the helmets come in fashionable shades of pink and polka-dot which would make a colonial district commissioner turn in his grave.

Special orders sometimes come in for designs such as the “Ethiopian”--a broad-brimmed white helmet still worn in Zimbabwe by chiefs as a badge of office.

Anyone wanting the Boer War look can opt for the “Wolseley”--a deep helmet covering the neck. There is also the “Livingstone,” which is not a helmet at all but a khaki kepi with a neck cloth, as worn by the famed Scottish explorer.

Managing Director James Blewett, a young accountant, also confesses to not wearing a helmet himself despite slogans on the wall of his office that warn of the risks of catching sunstroke without one.

Blewett is one of a group of Christian venture capitalists who took over Helmet Industries last year as it teetered into bankruptcy through bad management.