Just like the weather in New England, one thing we can always count on is the ever-changing world of fashion.
For women, the length of skirts and dresses went from the mid-calf in the 1950’s to the mid-thigh by the end of the 1970’s. Colors went from subdued solids and pastels to bright and bold. In the 1950’s, if a woman was wearing blue jeans, she was likely in the garden or working on the family farm. By the late 1970’s those work jeans had morphed into hip-hugging, bell bottom models that fashionable young women wore to go shopping during the day or clubbing in the evening. Solid colored tops were out, and wild paisley, bold stripes, or busy floral designs were in.
Throughout the twentieth century and beyond, women’s fashions seemed to change dramatically with each decade that passed. Styles that were once passe often return to fashion a few decades and a couple of generations later.
Fashion for men followed suit, albeit, usually at a slower and less dramatic pace. Until the middle part of the last century, much of what men wore hadn’t changed very much for over a hundred years. Lapels, button patterns, and fit changed from time to time, but most men in white collar positions wore a suit to work every day, and until it showed obvious signs of wear, most suits remained in use for at least a few years. Neckties varied in width, length, and patterns over the years, but most men who weren’t employed in a position of manual labor wore one on a daily basis.
Another item in men’s fashion that seemed to never go out of style was their headwear. Most men never went to work or church without first donning a hat. For many years, a man’s headwear also seemed to be related to his socio-economic position in life. Blue collar workers mostly wore flat caps with a narrow visor across the front. That style was popularly known as the “newsboy” cap. A man employed in an occupation such as an office clerk, bank teller, or pharmacist would often wear a bowler or a derby style hat. Middle management was more inclined to be seen wearing a fedora, while topflight executives and business owners leaned more towards a homburg. During the summer months, the more formal, heavier hats such as the fedora, homburg, and bowler would be changed out to either a Panama style or boater hat. That tradition seemed wane during the Great Depression; and by the end of WWII (the great equalizer among the men who fought in that conflict) men’s hats were less of an indicator of status and more of a choice of individual style.
For most men, leaving the house without a hat was almost akin to walking down the street with no shoes. It was a custom that had been around for centuries. Until suddenly, it wasn’t.
Photographs taken in the very early 1950’s of large gatherings of men outdoors almost always showed only a few hatless men. Photos from the 1963 March on Washington showed just the opposite.
Sometime between the late 1950’s and the middle 1960’s, most males abandoned the age-old custom of wearing a hat wherever they went. The obvious question is why such a sudden shift in apparel? There is likely no single definitive answer, but there are certainly several plausible reasons that when added together explain such a dramatic change.
The first has to do with transportation. Prior to WWII, most men who worked in the city, lived in the city. That meant getting back and forth to the job could be accomplished by either walking or taking a means of public transportation, such as a streetcar or bus. Wearing a hat when out in the elements kept a man’s hair dry should a shower or snow squall pop up. It also kept his head warm during the cold months of winter. Both streetcars and buses had plenty of headroom, so climbing aboard while wearing a hat posed no issues.
After the war, returning soldiers and their growing families began to move into the suburbs and transportation by bus was usually supplanted by driving the family car. Older cars sat high and generally had a decent amount of headroom. In the 1950’s, many car companies began to streamline their products, often putting style ahead of function. The 1957 body changes made at Chrysler Corporation with their new “Forward Look” design resulted in much lower, longer looking bodies. 1957 was also the year that General Motors introduced their X-frame, another design that allowed the company to lower the roof height of their products. For the first time, the floors were lower than the side sills and both drivers and passengers needed to bend and lower themselves more to get into the passenger compartment.
While pleasing to look at, those new cars had less headroom than their predecessors, so many men had difficulty getting in and out while wearing many popular styles of hats. It quickly became obvious that donning a hat in the house, then taking it off a few seconds later to ride in the car, and then reversing the sequence when arriving at work was annoying. Added to that was the hassle of storing some forms of headwear while at work. Hats took up space. With less time spent out in the elements, wearing a hat also became less of a necessity.
The second reason many people consider a primary cause for the demise of men’s hats had to do with the popularity of a handsome and charismatic young man who just happened to be the President of the United States. John F. Kennedy had a full head of hair and was not a particular fan of covering it up with a hat.
Kennedy did wear a traditional top hat as he walked to his inauguration, but after that first day in office in late January 1961, one would be hard pressed to see the President wearing a hat while out in public. If going hatless was good enough for JFK, it was certainly good enough for the average American male.
As younger men began wearing their hair a bit longer and fuller, the hat created an additional problem – “hat hair”. Short hair could be covered by a hat and when it was removed, there was little to no discernable difference in a man’s appearance. But a full head of hair compressed inside of a hat for more than just a few minutes could often result in a rather odd-looking mess when it was finally set free. Certainly, a good reason not to wear a hat on one’s way to the office or church.
Longer hair on men also meant many guys were leaving home after their morning shower with hair that was still wet (personal hair dryers for men hadn’t yet gained universal acceptance). Wet hair stuffed in a fancy felt fedora didn’t make for a good pairing.
Another theory, and perhaps the least known, came as a result of a 1947 study by the Hat Research Foundation (likely an industry organization that was already concerned that hat usage had been in a slow decline since the years of the Great Depression) found that 19% of the men who admitted to not wearing hats on a regular basis, claimed that hat usage triggered the trauma they had experienced during WWII. Several years of wearing a helmet while in combat created an uneasy feeling among some veterans; something that even a more stylish form of headwear wasn’t going to easily overcome.
While none of the above theories can be proven to be the proverbial nail in the coffin for men’s dressy headwear, they all add to the credible theory that the demise of the hat wasn’t a fickle fashion decision on the part of the male population. Will fancy hats ever make a comeback? I’d bet on it; just not when, where, or why.
