This is almost certainly completely wrong, the smurfs get their hat designs from the type of hats that gnomes and dwarves and goblins usually wear in germanic folklore, the most well known of all being the garden dwarves, whose design also inspired the dwarves in snow white. The design of garden dwarves is quite recent and apparently come from miners. The hats were filled with straw to protect the miner's head from the ceiling.
Fun random fact, the tool used to animate the smurfs hats in 3 out of 4 CG smurfs films, was actually created for Doctor Manhattan’s junk for the original Watchmen film.
Or maybe the artist was inspired by the connection of the Phrygian cap with psychedelic "liberty cap" mushrooms (Psilocybe semilanceata), which are distributed widely across Europe and associated with elves, fairies and various other wee folk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_cap
https://bluebuddies.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/1/1485....
And my unopular opinion is that Smurfette is most probably wearing a wig.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/06/smurfs-accused...
- Gargamel is a priest, the smurfs are prosecuted by the church
- Papa smurf wears red and has a beard because of ideological reasons, the smurfs political and economic system resembles communism
- Smurfs represent the seven deadly sins/seven capital vices