Jennifer Lopez did not leave much of the sun to chance at Wimbledon on Sunday.
Arriving for the gentlemen’s singles final in a cream Ralph Lauren look, she topped it with the label’s hemp-blend wide-brim hat, a roughly 17-inch sweep of woven material that curled around her face and shoulders. It was glamorous, yes, but after a tournament marked by six consecutive days above 30 degrees Celsius, or roughly 86 degrees Fahrenheit, it also looked unusually sensible.
Lopez was hardly alone. Despite Wimbledon’s complicated relationship with hats — women in the Royal Box are asked not to wear them during play so they do not obstruct other guests’ views — hats became one of the celebrity crowd’s most visible answers to the heat during the final weekend, ranging from traditional straw fedoras to compact, retro-inflected brims.
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Cynthia Erivo took the structured route for the Men’s Finals. She paired a navy woven hat, somewhere between a bucket and a cloche, with a pinstriped Ralph Lauren suit, striped shirt and tie.
The softly rolled brim offered less coverage than Lopez’s enormous Ralph Lauren design, but it had the same precise, dressed-up quality that has helped revive pillboxes and other architectural hat shapes this season.
That structured lane had already surfaced on Saturday. Thandiwe Newton attended in a black boater with a shallow crown, straight brim and narrow pale trim, pairing it with a brightly printed pleated set by Thebe Magugu.
Nicole Kidman and Twiggy stayed closer to the classics. Kidman arrived in a cream Ralph Lauren suit and tie with an ivory straw trilby finished with a brown band, which she rested in front of her once seated. Twiggy wore a natural straw fedora with a black band, a white trouser suit, pink waistcoat and pink sneakers.
Wimbledon’s relationship with hats has always been slightly contradictory. The tournament encourages spectators to prepare for seats in direct sun, and straw Panamas and fedoras were seemed to be everywhere across the grounds this year. The Royal Box, however, asks women not to wear hats that could block the view behind them. Kidman has already worked around that rule once: she wore a pale straw hat with dark ribboning to the 2025 men’s final, then removed it during the match, as she did this year.
The broader fashion story is similarly split. Wide-brimmed hats have returned with the kind of vintage drama recently seen in Dua Lipa’s bridal style, while straw pillboxes and other compact silhouettes are pushing summer headwear in a more polished direction. Wimbledon put both sides of that revival in the same stands, then added classic fedoras and trilbies to the mix.
There may not be one hat of summer 2026. Lopez went big enough to carry her own shade. Erivo and Thandiwe Newton kept things structured. Kidman and Twiggy stayed with shapes that never really left Wimbledon. After the tournament’s hottest stretch, the category looked less like an optional finishing touch and more like the one accessory everyone had a reason to reconsider.
