Readers reply: when and why did men stop wearing hats?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
"My mum (b.1952) said that one of the main things she noticed when JFK came on the scene was that he was shown on the television being interviewed and on the news without a hat, something very unusual at that time, and that “virtually overnight” all the men in Manchester stopped wearing hats. This led us to hypothesise that poor President Kennedy may have been knocked off by a group of irate milliners."
The "demob suit" included a hat: either a flat-hat or a felt hat. So by (say) 1920, substantially all men in Britain at least owned a hat. So you see photos of great crowds of working men emerging from a factory in the interwar years, all wearing flat-hats.
When I worked in the City in the early 80's, balances between banks were handled by a company called Union Discount, who employed messengers wearing toppers to walk from bank to bank. At that time, some bankers were still wearing bowlers. No other men were wearing hats then. But that is an echo of how it must have been in (say) the sixties. My guess is that hat-wearing declined with the arrival of Brilkreem, quiffs and ducks-arses, in the fifties. These teen haircuts were strictly incompatible with hat-wearing.
A trilby is still worn by many racetrack bookies; wearing a trilby suggests you are a sort of "Del Boy" wheeler-dealer, and not very trustworthy. I think a felt fedora makes you look a bit like a federal agent from the thirties, or perhaps a pushy US newspaper reporter (with his press-pass tucked into the hatband).
For the most part, the headgear I see around here consists of a baseball cap. TBH I barely consider that a hat at all - it's barely better than a knotted handkerchief. And a lot of men seem to wear some kind of beanie.
I am balding, and what fuzz remains is clipped to a #2. I now always wear a fedora out - felt in cold weather, a panama if it's sunny. I was always bare-headed until about 10 years ago (except I was required to wear a peaked cap at school, sometimes).
Even if you look at TV shows from the early 90's, you will see fashions that will never be worn today, women's dress was definitely more modest and conservative.
It signals that you are uncomfortable, that you intend to leave soon, essentially that you don't enjoy being here with me.
I remember some people being quite insistent that I should take my coat/jacket off, they say something like "make yourself comfortable" but I understand it more as a polite way of saying "take off your coat, you asshole". I guess the same can be said of hats.
Interesting. Never in a million years would I have taken that meaning from it. I would just think that the person is cold.
Besides, the rules about wearing a hat inside can be quite complex: women have to wear a had while men have to take it off (traditional church service in Europe); high ranking men wearing their hats, while lower ranking men have to take them off; petitioners removing their hat in front of the benefactor ...
A hat signifies status. Consider the top hat - it signifies wealth. Or the general's hat - think of Wellington and Napoleon. They signify authority.
It's inappropriate to walk into someone's parlour as a guest, while disporting the mark of your superiority. Baring your head signifies humility. It's just polite.
In the past, maybe. I don't think it does so much now (at least in my part of the US). If it signifies anything besides aesthetics, it's signifying that the person is part of some defined group. Status doesn't enter into it.
> while disporting the mark of your superiority.
So, keeping your "low status" hat on would be OK? (I'm assuming that there is such a thing -- that some hats are "high status" implies that there exists the opposite).
Baring your head is the sign of humility. It doesn't matter which hat you have to doff.
In the UK, a "low status" hat would have been be a flat-hat, or flat cap. It used to be a worker's hat; it was also worn by countrymen - farmers, country landowners, gamekeepers and the like - but not in town.
Nowadays I often see expensive tweed flat-hats on the heads of fashionable, well-to-do townies. To me, that look is poncey.
Maybe if this were the 70s, but this is 2021 and wearing a hat indoors is perfectly normal/acceptable.
Romans mostly didn't wear hats.
Jewish men have worn the kippah (small hat) essentially all the time for much of that period. Especially indoors, in a synagogue. It's a symbol of respect for God.
The "take the hat off indoors but always wear it outdoors" certainly hasn't been universal in western Europe for the last 4000 years.
We don't put shoes on the table, it is considered impolite. The reasoning is simple, shoes can be dirty and you don't want them on the table where you might be eating some time later.
If hats were only worn outside, maybe they were dirty too? I do like the idea that people wore hats because you could expect to have poo flying out of windows and it would fit this context too.
Now whenever I happen to pickup my high school age children and see kids wearing hats in school I'm actually shocked at how "rude" they are being. It is silly.
You don't wear a hat in someone's home (or the House Of God, for that matter). And if you want to show respect to someone, you raise your hat (or just tip the brim, if all you're willing to do is go through the motions).
I find that raising my hat tends to cause startled looks. But I still do it.
In old times, at least in Europe, discovering yourself was therefore a sign of respect, as it meant voluntarily leaving your guard down in front of someone.
In some Royal courts, that is actually how the king made you a noble, by just saying "you may cover yourself" - only the highest of social ranks was allowed to keep their hat on in front of royalty.
Here in Spain we learn about it because those tropes appear a lot in classic theatre: a person choosing to remain covered in a church is seen as blasfemy, not discovering your cape and hat while passing near a stranger at night is a sign that you are a criminal, etc.
The rain here in the Puget Sound area is usual light enough that I'm not going to get too wet when outside for short periods such as going between my car and indoors, taking out the trash, etc except for my glasses.
An umbrella would deal with that but an umbrella occupies a hand.
The rain is usually close enough to vertical that a hat with a brim that is a 1.5 to 2 inches is sufficient to keep the rain off my glasses.
If there is enough wind to make the rain come at an angle, or to threaten to blow off the hat, I have another hat with a chin strap and a wider brim.
[1] Seattle only gets 2 or 3 times as much rain as Los Angeles, and much less than many big eastern or midwestern cities. Seattle's reputation as a rainy city comes from its rain is more uniform than that of cities like Los Angeles--LA gets its rain in a small number of heavy rain events where Seattles has light rain spread out over many many more days, and those eastern cities all get a lot of things that are much worse than rain so it doesn't even occur to people that they are also rainy cities whereas in Seattle rain is about the limit of "bad" weather.
As-is, my vocation is in an office, and I'd sooner be able to advertise a good head of hair ;-)
In my experience, the percentage of Quora questions that have an actual helpful and correct answer is somewhere in the low single digits.
And, aside, I don’t get it at all! There’s a reason humanity initially switched from pocket watches to wrist watches! Why would you want to go back?!
(I <3 my Pebble)
This too seems like a very polarized discussion where we may never know to what extent it was true :)