Men’s fashion is dreadfully boring, but one thing we used to have was a profusion and proliferation of different hats we could wear.
I know the m’lady meme and mall ninjas have forever cursed the fedora (as well as the actually, that’s a trilby crowd), but those memes postdate the decline of the hat by several decades.
Currently, we only have baseball caps and beanies in common circulation, with impractical-for-sidewalk-use cowboy hats being the only extant outlier.
Does anyone long for the return of the hat and/or have any insight into what caused their decline?
Women don’t wear hats much either. I only do at the beach, or sometimes the Korean Grandma visor to do yardwork, but never really for fashion. I do have a witch hat, I guess that is for looks but certainly not fashionable. It’s too hot here to really wear anything warm; and like OP, once I put head and hair in a hat I’m not whatever the standard size is.
I don’t really love hats on guys, it makes me think they are hiding balding. I like bald guys fine, the hiding it is what I don’t like.
I want tricorns to come back in style
I just think they are neat.
No one is stopping you from wearing anything. You can wear a Fez covered in glitter if you want.
I’m bringing back the Fez. Aaaaayyyyy…
I still wear a covid mask. It’s still useful for disease prevention and looks nice.
I wear a bucket hat. Keeps the sun off my head. Do I care what I look like?
Not at all. It’s colorful too.
Bucket hats are back anyway, I literally got one as swag from an Electric Callboy concert
but does it? the brim is really small.
the head and face, while connected, may have different sunlight requirements.
Cars. Blame cars for the lack of hats.
The car has a roof and climate control. Hats are much less needed for staying comfortable when moving around outside if you’re taking a car.
Any type of hat that has a brim on the back cannot be worn in a car with headrests. Many cars lack the headroom for tall hats. You have to remove your hat to get in the car. Its enough of an inconvenience to cause its decline.
The one kind of brimmed hat that is common today is the baseball hat. The brim is only in the front; the hat isn’t tall. You can just wear it in the car without thinking about it like most other garments.
So unless you’re content being the “hat guy,” (you can definitely make the hat work) your only option is to abolish the automobile as the primary mode of transport. Good luck!
Perfect. I hate cars, love hats. I have my villain origin story now. Thanks.
Back in the day I chuckled when David Lettermen said that anyone who wears a fedora after the 1950’s looks like a dick.
The current state of modern men with hats.
I’d have to find that excellent video again but essentially the answer is pretty simple: cars. Basically the purpose of the hat pretty much disappeared over night once everybody started riding inside them (sun and rain protection). Moreover, they were very impractical to keep on while driving so people stopped taking them out with them and yeah, poof.
Anyway, this summer I did what I said I would never and bought myself a magnificent, expensive Panama hat. And yes, it so happens to be a fedora (I know, I know). I love it, I instantly got a dozen compliments on the first week, and I decided I would single handedly revive the fashion. Join me.
If we join you, then we are spoiling your ambitions of doing it single-handedly.
For a cause this great I am willing to share
Fashion should be about your expression, not about what is popular. If you long for something, wear it. The only thing that really made the fedora/trilby toxic was that a bunch of people jumped on a hype train because they viewed it as a short cut to being fashionable. Making it inherently inauthentic. The speed at which they ditched those hats only proved the point that they were wearing it not for themselves, but for the opinion of others.
Authenticity will always be fashionable. Not everyone will like your style/fashion. What matters is that you love your style more than anyone, because then the opinion of others won’t matter.
People still make those old hats. Measure the size of your dome. Find one you love. Wear the shit out of it.
I have a minnetonka outback hat. Its leather and its 20 years old, I wear it whenever I have the chance. I get comments and compliments every time I wear it.
Be the example, wear that hat you long to see.
I also wear tons of outback hats. I get plenty of compliments!
Mine makes me sweat like a horse. I love it but the weight and heat are often deal breakers when reaching for my trek hat.
That’s fair. I wear mine in cooler months.
Perhaps I need a summer hat.
The anti-hat people can fuck off, I wear what I like, although most of the timt it’s a Greek fisherman hat, and I own them in about eight different colours. I do have a trillby and occasionally wear it.
You can wear anything you want. But we will judge you for wearing a trillby
And you can fuck off. I don’t mean that personally, just to clarify. :)
I bought this beauty from a gent on the Internet. I have hat for days.
I cannot say that I long for the return of hats, as I do not enjoy wearing hats. More power to you in your quest for hats.
Because having a hat is a huge pain in the ass.
I sometimes find wearing a hat to cause a headache, but never ass pain. You may be using it wrong. Have you tried reading the instructions?
I have good hair so I never really got into hats until recently. I realized I don’t mind getting wet when it’s raining a little, except I want protect my glasses from getting rained on. So I bring a hat but skip the jacket, unless it’s raining heavily. I feel like carrying around a jacket isn’t worth the trouble. Plus my apartment has a covered garage. I can only get so wet in the few seconds it takes to get inside from parking. Plus most of my jobs have had covered parking.
Personally I don’t like how hoods block your peripheral vision. I have a fondness for the old hat + trench coat combination, although I own neither. I just like a waterproof baseball cap.
I think you’re the first to bring up transportation; the disappearance of walking as a mode of transport is my #1 culprit.
