A fez is a hat: usually deep red, round, with a flat top and no brim, often with a black tassel hanging from the crown. It sits on the head like a short, stiff cylinder. It became strongly tied to the Ottoman world — officials, soldiers, and later many city men wore it. In the twentieth century some countries pushed it aside, because the hat stood for the old order. In English it is simply the name of that hat. You meet it in history, travel writing, and costume, not as something most people wear in the street now. People sometimes loosely call other brimless round caps a fez; strictly, the classic one is that red, tasseled, flat-topped hat.