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This is almost certainly completely wrong, the smurfs get their hat designs from the type of hats that gnomes and dwarves and goblins usually wear in germanic folklore, the most well known of all being the garden dwarves, whose design also inspired the dwarves in snow white. The design of garden dwarves is quite recent and apparently come from miners. The hats were filled with straw to protect the miner's head from the ceiling.

I just assumed that Tailor Smurf (https://smurfs.fandom.com/wiki/Tailor_Smurf) made them

Fun random fact, the tool used to animate the smurfs hats in 3 out of 4 CG smurfs films, was actually created for Doctor Manhattan’s junk for the original Watchmen film.

I'm proud that I managed to guess it, it's a Phrygian cap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap

Or maybe the artist was inspired by the connection of the Phrygian cap with psychedelic "liberty cap" mushrooms (Psilocybe semilanceata), which are distributed widely across Europe and associated with elves, fairies and various other wee folk?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata

Smurfs are most probably bald, as discussed in this thread on a good old fashioned forum:

https://bluebuddies.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/1/1485....

And my unopular opinion is that Smurfette is most probably wearing a wig.

Dutch catoonist Dirkjan revealed the real answer already years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/dirkjan/s/zszexnXLRu

I can't believe they re-colored the entire first comic to make the Smurfs purple and not black. That's hilarious

Maybe the white on top of their heads IS their hair? And Papa smurf was old and bald and used a hat to blend in.

From a drawing perspective the hat is fairly simple (3-4 lines), looks good and quick to sketch - speed mattered when drawing lots of Smurf’s.

Idk about all that, but the Smurfs are probably commies right?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/06/smurfs-accused...

The first time I saw the smurf hat is in the 70s, on a 20 cents Mexican coin.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/YIoAAOSwA7ZmQs6N/s-l1600.png

The Phrygian cap was also the mascot for the Paris Olympics https://www.olympics.com/fr/olympic-games/paris-2024/mascot

Speaking of Gnomes.. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLVGfItCRsm/?igsh=aDdmdWw0M3M...

Actually happy to see something very niche that i was taught in school.

> Somewhere along the line in the French Revolution, they adopted the freed slaves’ head gear as their own symbol of freedom, but picked the wrong one.

That’s just so typical of the French Revolution.

I have bigger questions about their long-johns than the hats.

- Why long pants instead of shorts? It does make them look more dignified, I suppose.

- Why white, you know that's just going to stain the feet something terrible.