So. We having this revival or what?

[vespasian]

Yes we are obsessed with them, but not obsessed to the point of opining openly or being rude about others choice of them, or lack of. It would be more accurate for me to say: "Why are people obsessed with what others put on their heads."

I dont recieve much comment nowadays, probably because I wear the kind of look that says, "think it, but say it and you'll wish you hadnt."

But there are probably many people out there who do get a giggle or an odd look.

 

[vespasian]

Quoted from SAGA website:

Hats

A personal, as well as a social, loss, this. When I think of the hats I have lost, or lost track of... a grey fedora from Bates, high-crowned; a straw-coloured velour fedora from Herbert Johnson; a featherweight racing trilby from Lock; a Stetson “Gun Club� bound-brim, blown off into the mud outside the Groucho Club in London by Terry Jones; a leather kangaroo-skin cap… many others.

Where did they go, these hats? Thrown away? Stolen? Lost? Lost track of? Vanished by the operation of time? Lost to the depredations of love? Disintegrated? Left behind deliberately or accidentally? In the fate of these hats can be found the entire taxonomy of loss.

But my hat loss is only a microcosm of the world’s. Only in the south and western United States and in Australia do you regularly encounter not only men in hats, but hat shops: not urban-poser hat shops, but hat shops which are there because hats are something you need.

Elsewhere (outside the military) you seldom see a hat, apart from the vile, proletarian, gum-chewing, shouting-in-the-street, bum-cleft, baggy-trousered, back-to-front, I-am-an-inarticulate-moron, why-don’t-you-punch-my-lights-out-and-choke-me-on-the-cord-of-my-iPod baseball cap, which is such a negligible item, worn by such negligible “people�, that it is impossible to have strong feelings about it.

Real hats, though, have all but gone. When did you last see a homburg, without which no doctor 50 years ago would have been able to practise? When did you last see a trilby, outside the racecourse? When a fedora, a bowler, a balmoral, a tam-o’-shanter, a Bombay Bowler, a pork-pie or a floppy-brimmed wideawake?

The sad desuetude of the lid or titfer is a cause for curiosity as well as regret. How can something so simple yet so stylish have simply gone away? Look at any crowd photograph of the 1930s or 1940s: a sea of hats. In the 1950s, they were fading a little, helped by sad variants from Dunn & Co in corduroy and unpersuasive tweed; by the 1960s, there was hardly a hat to be seen.

Now they are the preserve of old movies, or of idiosyncratic film heroes, it being impossible to imagine Bogart or Indiana without his hat. And yet the hat is a sad loss. Never mind its practicality in keeping off the rain or protecting the head from the sun; never mind, even, the sheer style a hat imparts to the wearer; a whole lexicon of distinction has been lost. The hat was a great signalling device, indicating one’s attitude to others by the decision to doff, touch, lift, or take off and hold in the hands.

Above all, the hat encouraged the powers of discernment between friend, stranger and acquaintance; between the man and the gentleman, the lady and the mere woman, between inferiors, equals, and superiors; the social divisiveness being levelled out by the use of the lost word, Mister.

But all things must come full circle. Sooner or later, people will grow tired of compulsory slovenliness and formality will return; and with it, the hat.

 

[Raindog]

vile, proletarian, gum-chewing, shouting-in-the-street, bum-cleft, baggy-trousered, back-to-front, I-am-an-inarticulate-moron, why-don’t-you-punch-my-lights-out-and-choke-me-on-the-cord-of-my-iPod baseball cap, which is such a negligible item, worn by such negligible “people�, that it is impossible to have strong feelings about it.

I like it I like it!
Makes me want to wear the hats even more


Jeff.

 

[John in Covina]

I sort of have a theory as to the decline of good hats in popularity. One part is TV, although in old TV men wore hats, like Perry Mason, Lucy and old Superman episodes. I have a feeling that there was a decline and that TV re-enforced this because when you are filming someone they are easier to Identify without the hat on, so it strokes the vanity of the actors and actresses that the director says, look don't wear the hat so you audience can see you. As hats decline on TV people key off of what they see and a hat becomes less and less of a nessecary item for a man's wardrobe.

Tie it to the idea that a good hat was an expense at any time and that you could apply those dollars elsewhere, down goes sales. In circles where a hat is a nessecity, outdoors work, they remain a viable item, and in small cicles a good hat is still a status symbol, but for most of the US the connection is lost.

 

[Twitch]

When Kennedy went around bare-headed it set a tone and that was the end of fedoras in the USA.

As far as what others think I have to put it in perspective too since some years ago there was a big influx of these butt UGLY medium weight coats people were buying for cold weather that looked like a circus train collided with a paint truck. Every bizarre color from a bad LSD trip was seen in these crappy things. And people actually seemed to wear them proudly. I wouldn't be caught dead in one but that's the differences in people. Fedoras aren't garrish like much of the crapola that passes for stylish, in-fashion clothing.

 

[jamespowers]

Fedoras aren't garrish like much of the crapola that passes for stylish, in-fashion clothing.

Amen. The others are:
"vile, proletarian, gum-chewing, shouting-in-the-street, bum-cleft, baggy-trousered, back-to-front, I-am-an-inarticulate-moron, why-don’t-you-punch-my-lights-out-and-choke-me-on-the-cord-of-my-iPod baseball cap, which is such a negligible item, worn by such negligible “people�, that it is impossible to have strong feelings about it."

Regards to all,

J