Most common color of the fedora

[qwerty]

What was the most common color of the fedora back in the days when it was popular?
All the movies from that period are in black and white and it is hard to tell. I am imagening them all in grey and maybe brown.
Was any other color available for the mases?

 

[SHARPETOYS]

Most Vintage I see are brown in color...

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Based on...

..what's available now, it seems all the ones in my size are cream/beige/tan!!! I would love to have a variety of colors black, through grey to taupe and brown, but there seems to be a plethora of Beige still on the market.

Does anyone else find that to be true? I would have thought that grey was the standard color as it can be worn with most any other color suit. But my perception may well be tainted by decades of black & white film and television.

I do think we can all agree that what wasn't available in the Golden Era was the, now popular, Lime Green and Candy Apple Oriental Purple!

-dixon cannon

 

[Hemingway Jones]

In all of my digging through thousands of boxes at antique shops and vintage shops, I would have to say that more than half are brown. If brown wasn't the most prevalent color, it sure was the most prevalent color to survive.

 

[funneman]

In all of my digging through thousands of boxes at antique shops and vintage shops, I would have to say that more than half are brown. If brown wasn't the most prevalent color, it sure was the most prevalent color to survive.

Which brings up an interesting point. If brown was the most popular color, therefore the color picked over the others, there shouldn't be so many brown ones available now. If you run into so many brown fedoras, still in the box, would that indicate that brown was usually passed over for a different color, like gray?

Would it would stand to reason that the most popular color back then would be the hardest to find now, because they were all used and worn out?

Or am I just over thinking this?

 

[Matt Deckard]

I'd say grey and off white were very popular... black fedoras not that often seen, though black homburgs and bowlers yes.

I think for the East coat it was more the colorless styles and blues, and for the west we went with the browns and tans and greens.

That is what I see in the color photos of the time.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

I was speaking of used hats in boxes and used hats in piles. You rarely see deadstock. It's out there, but rare.

Matt brings up an excellent point, photos of the time would be the best indicator. Personally, if I wanted a definite answer, I would look at color photos of crowd scenes: baseball games and parades. Then I would count the hats by color. I wouldn't rely on what the eye sees, I would count them and figure out the percentages.

 

[Cruiser]

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Digital Library on line (http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/photos.html) has hundreds of depression-era photos, although they are all or nearly all black and white, that anyone can view. I went through them recently on a non-hat project, but I noticed that there don't seem to be as many dark-toned hats (presumably blacks, dark grays and dark browns) as there are lighter toned hats--this even in the winter months, when straws would have been put away (presumably most straws are light in color). Anyway, they are a great resource for anyone who wants to look at lots of guys in hats.

 

[Andykev]

It is a Gray area.....

GRAY (not Zane Grey), then brown are the most common vintage colors. From what I have seen. The dove gray and the fawn brown are rare and coveted by ME in 7 3/8.!

 

[scotrace]

This one is wide open

It would be surprising if there were a definitive answer. But Hat Life certainly tracked such things. If anyone had hours to flip through their collection...










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