World’s Fair hat design

The Trylon and Perisphere were located at the center of the 1939 New York World’s Fair and served as its thematic emblems—the Trylon being a 600-foot-high obelisk, and the Perisphere a 180-foot-wide orb. Within these monumental structures, visitors could ride the then-longest escalator to visit Henry Dreyfuss’s Democracity, the industrial designer’s plan for a utopian city of the future. Branding innovator Edward Bernays served as the fair’s director of public relations, ensuring that these two distinctive structures were featured on all World’s Fair advertisements and publications. Fair officials also licensed these iconic symbols to all manner of industrial design and merchandising companies.



This uniform design features these distinctive shapes, as well as the fair’s signature colors—the blue and orange of New York City’s flag, which in turn reference the earlier flag of Dutch New Amsterdam. Attributed to Peggy Boone, the design demonstrates how World’s Fair planners worked to unify their aesthetic in all respects.