Toque

Le Chef de l'Hôtel Chatham, Paris (c. 1921), oil on canvas by William Orpen

A toque blanche (French for "white hat"), often shortened to toque, is a tall, round, pleated, starched white hat worn by chefs.[4]

The toque most likely originated as the result of the gradual evolution of head coverings worn by cooks throughout the centuries.[5] Their roots are sometimes traced to the casque à meche (stocking cap) worn by 18th-century French chefs. The colour of the casque à meche denoted the rank of the wearer. Boucher, the personal chef of the French statesman Talleyrand, was the first to insist on white toques for sanitary reasons.

The modern toque is popularly believed to have originated with the French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784–1833), who stiffened the casque à meche with cardboard[6] .

• A toque, or sometimes touge, was the traditional headgear of various French magistrates.
• A low type in black velvet, called mortier (also rendered in English as mortarboard), was used by the président à mortier, president of a parlement (the royal highest court in a French province), and of the members of two of the highest central courts, cour de cassation and cour des comptes.
• A red toque is sometimes worn by German judges, primarily by justices on the Federal Constitutional Court.

The pleated, low, round hat worn in French universities – the equivalent of the mortarboard or tam at British and American universities – is also called a toque.

In the Napoleonic era, the French first empire replaced the coronets of traditional ("royal") heraldry with a rigorously standardized system (as other respects of "Napoleonic" coats of arms) of toques, reflecting the rank of the bearer. Thus a Napoleonic duke used a toque with seven ostrich feathers and three lambrequins, a count a toque with five feathers and two lambrequins, a baron three feathers and one lambrequin, a knight only one ostrich feather (see Nobility of the First French Empire).

Toque is also used for a hard-type hat or helmet, worn for riding, especially in equestrian sports, often black and covered with black velvet.

Man wearing a tuque.

In Canada, tuque /tuːk/ is the common name for a knitted winter hat, or watch cap (sometimes called a beanie in other parts of the world); the spelling "touque", although not recognized by the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, is also sometimes seen in written English.[7] The Canadian-English term was assimilated from Canadian-French tuque. Toque first appeared in writing around 1870.[8][9][10]

The fashion is said to have originated with the coureurs de bois, French and Métis fur traders, who kept their woollen nightcaps on for warmth during cold winter days. Such hats are known in other English-speaking countries by a variety of names, including beanie, watch cap or stocking cap; the terms tuque and toque are unique to Canada and northern areas of the United States close to the Canada–United States border.

In 2013, CBC Edmonton launched a poll to ask viewers how they spelled the word. The options given were toque, tuque or touque. Nearly 6,500 people voted, with Edmontonians remaining divided on the issue.[11]

In recent years toques have resurfaced as an extremely popular fashion item, they are used all year round seen not only used outdoor for weather but as an indoor fashion accessory. Many toques are used to promote or advertise as items of Canadian memorabilia i.e. Canadian NHL hockey teams, Canadian provinces and cities and many more popular culture artifacts.