Dev Anand indeed would be chuckling with glee along with Shammi Kapoor as they have been two of the stars who have experimented with the topi or the hat through scores of films that they acted in, in their cinematic career, as Aamir Khan has emerged as the worthy successor who experiments with the hat through his films in one way or the other. Continuing with his penchant and fascination for the hats, Aamir Khan has again used it as the part of his overall outfit in DHOOM 3 for the character that he is playing in this film.

The humble hat in its various manifestations indeed brings about an element of mystique and naughtiness to the characters that the actors play and Aamir Khan has been one of the most robust practitioners of this attire. Among the present generation of actors he would perhaps be the only actors whose stylizations of the hat become a rage, as it happened with the hat that he wore in DIL HAI KE MANTA NAHIN. Just rewind to the scene in DHKMN where he ventures into the den of the villains once again to fetch his hat that he had forgotten while fighting it out with them, and even though Pooja Bhatt admonished him from going there again. 

While Aamir Khan indeed has been the worthy successor to Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor as far as sporting a hat is concerned, credit has to be given to Dev Anand for making it an essential part of the sartorial attire, and he is perhaps the first star on whom a song was picturised which eulogized the virtue of the hat, song being- Aie Meri Topi Palat Ke Aa, from the film FANTOOSH, which was followed by the song- Sar Pe Topi Lal in the film TUMSA NAHIN DEKHA, then in the film BAL BRAHMACHARI or JUNGLEE or DIL DEKE DEKHO, topi now being the part of attire of Shammi Kapoor. 

If one were to go into the sociological reasoning for penchant for the humble hat, it would have to be found in the culture from which these actors emerged, the Punjabi culture where adorning a head gear was an essential accompaniment of the attire, but factoring in the metropolitan ambience in which Dev Anand and Shammi Kapoor came to earn their living in the city of then Bombay, for them to choose a hat was perhaps a better option, one perhaps evoking the memory of cultural mooring and secondly balancing it with the modern western nuance of the western civilization, whose vestiges still continued to manifest in fifties and sixties after the Britishers had left shores of India. 

Difference of Aamir Khan lies in the fact that he has deconstructed the hat and made it the attire of the common man, as he did in RANGEELA, in DIL HAI KE MANTA NAHIN, in ANDAAZ APNA APNA and as he is now doing with DHOOM 3. Perhaps, as a symbol of extending the outreach of the hat to the common man Aamir Khan gave the hat he wore in DHOOM 3 to Salman Khan, the man who is one of the few stars with whom the common man identifies with relative ease. It indeed would be interesting to see whether this hat becomes the rage for the common man as essential fashion attire the same way after release of DHOOM 3 as it had become with DIL HAI KE MANTA NAHIN.