The Decline Of Hat Wearing

I just came across a BBC News article that talks about the decline of hat wearing and the more recent popularity of it.

What makes a man wear a hat?
By Stephen Dowling
BBC News Magazine



Cast a glance over a photograph of a crowd or a street 100 or even 50 years ago. Take a look at the men assembled, and see if you can spot any of them who aren't wearing a hat. Up until the 1960s, most men would have no more left the house without a hat than they would without trousers. Bankers and stockbrokers made the commute into the city wearing bowler hats, gentlemen took to the streets in straw boaters and manual workers passed through the factory gates wearing cloth caps. The crowd shots of sporting events like the FA Cup in the 1920s show a sea of brims, peaks and ribbons. The type of hat men wore may have been dependent upon their station, but regardless of class men did not venture out in public without a hat upon their head.


Come the 1960s, however, and the rigid adherence to a code of headgear seemed to fade. Men started going about their business without a hat. "It was the motorcar. Before cars became common they were a useful item of clothing to keep the weather off," says Christine Smith, manager of the Hat Works hat museum in Stockport, Greater Manchester. Once upon a time men felt naked without hats
"And it was a status symbol - you had the bowler hat and the flat cap. It showed your place in the hierarchy."

In the post-war period, with the most intense class stratification starting to fade, it was perhaps understandable that the badges of status like bowler and flat cap no longer carried the same weight. Hats, up until then, had big business. At their peak, hat factories around Manchester produced felt hats in their thousands - the Denton Hat Company was making 100,000 a week in the 1930s to satisfy demand.

Tim Boucher, the proprietor of hat outfitter Bates in London's Jermyn Street, agrees that the hat watershed came in the 1960s. "The younger generation had longer hair and that stopped them wanting to wear hats as much," he says. "People were also getting more affluent - they were buying cars, and weren't needing to wear hats."

There have been cheerleaders for the recent men's hat revival
Peter Howarth, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph's men's fashion magazine, says the decline of formality in menswear has led to the disappearance of the hat. "There is this myth that John F Kennedy went to his inauguration in 1960 without a hat. Actually he did, but he didn't wear it during the ceremony. "Generally if you look at the history of menswear, in the last 100 years it's been a gradual progression from formal to casual wear. The jacket has gone from a military frock coat to the jacket of a lounge suit, the shirt has gone from something with stiff studded collars to a fold down collar, and the formal, handmade shoe has been replaced, in some cases, with trainers.

"Nowadays the expectation we have is that the things we wear will be comfortable. And the formal hat fell victim to that general trend."
While the British stopped wearing hats as part of their typical work garb, they are now linked more with pastimes. Men wear Panama hats while watching the cricket, a straw boater while enjoying the boat race, or a trilby when at the races.
It is now common to see men in hats on nights out
So has the modern man turned his back on the fedora et al? Is hat wearing - other than a woolly one when the mercury plummets - merely an affectation?

Mr Boucher believes we shouldn't be too quick to pronounce the death of the hat. "The last three or four years we have seen our sales rise by about 30%," he says. "A lot of customers are tending to go in for things like the narrow-band trilby, or the Gatsby cap, which is still very popular." It is now not uncommon to see men on nights out wearing hats, rather than caps, perhaps inspired by celebrity hat wearers like Pete Doherty.

Mr Boucher says a lot of younger, casually-dressed customers are seeking ways to show their individuality. Hat-wearing for men is often linked to formal behaviour - the tipping of a hat when a lady walks past, the removal of a hat on entry to church, the holding of a hat to the heart during the national anthem, and the throwing aloft at the end of hostilities.

Dave Swan, 40, a graphic designer from London, started regularly wearing a hat about a year ago. "I've pretty much always worn some sort of head gear off and on but I suddenly became interested in Baker Boys [a kind of Gatsby cap] about a year ago, since then they've been all I've worn. "To many, hats are nothing more than a novelty item. Mr Swan says it is partly about personal style, but also "there's an element of a psychological safety blanket as well, the more you cover your head the more of a wall you build up from the rest of society".

Ollie Thomas, 25, a publicist, often wears a hat to work. He says they can be "anything from beanies to bobbles to flat caps to Cubans". "When I am in the office I prefer to wear a more traditional flat cap as opposed to weekend when I would wear a beanie."
He says he also likes the link with tradition, "especially with my tweed flat caps". "They can also be seen as stylish as well, so you can kill two birds with one stone."

Howarth says it's younger men - aged between 14 and 25 - who are keeping hat wearing alive. "They are wearing a lot of hats - beanies and baseball caps and flat caps. And they're doing it a lot more than they were 10 years ago. To them it's a fashion thing.

Over the years, women's hat fashion has also changed. Hair was held rigidly in place with huge quantities of spay & lacquer, which allowed a small hat to be pinned on top. Now silky, free-flowing hair with highlights predominates. Other than Ascot, when was the last time you saw a women under retirement age wear a hat?

It's all to do with hair. My father was a young man in the 50s, and like most working class men of the time sported an Elvis quiff or a DA. There was no way he was going to ruin that with a hat.

I grew up in the early 80s when long hair on a man was de rigeur. Punks cut it strangely but it was still long. Then there was the mullet look of the late 80s.

Now that head stubble is in fashion they have started wearing hats again. They even wear them indoors and in cars. My gloriously long hair has been replaced by my baldness-by-choice, but I am in the habit of not wearing a hat, except to keep off the weather.

I wear a hat to keep the sun off my bald head. Those people who have hair are unlikely to wear a hat because it'll interfere with or hide their expensive hair-do or hair-gelled creativity.

So, I went to get coffee, and the waitress said, "What are you supposed to be, a jockey or something?"
With remarks like that, no wonder there's a decline of hat wearing.

I said to her, "Buttercup! Less yapping, and more coffee pouring, please."

Darby wrote:So, I went to get coffee, and the waitress said, "What are you supposed to be, a jockey or something?"
With remarks like that, no wonder there's a decline of hat wearing.

I said to her, "Buttercup! Less yapping, and more coffee pouring, please."

There's nothing I hate more than a yapping nosey waitress. Did ya give a tip after that rude comment?