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?
Eh. In winter I wear my wool fedora. Rest of the year I wear flatcaps as smart casual, snapbacks with street style or my Tilly when I’m up and about outside the city.
Fashion? Why?
I do wear a wide brimmed hat to shade my face and neck on sunny days. Exposure to sun causes cancer.
You can just wear a hat, I have a toque I’m quite fond of.
I wear a wide brimmed straw or wool hat when I’m outside. Skin cancer runs in my family. I don’t really care what other people think about it.
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.
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.
Good for you. I bet it looks awesome.
I do not care at all about fashion. I throw on a ballcap if it’s sunny and I’m doing yardwork or it’s raining and I want to keep the rain off my glasses. More rarely, if out in intense sun for a long time, I have a couple of other hats. That’s the extent of the time I’m wearing hats (and that’s more because I need to than ever want to).
I’m a keen wearer of hats. Balding man living in the skin cancer capital of the world. My daily is a felt pork pie hat, but I have a few fedoras in various brim widths and colours, and my most recent was a genuine Panama hat that I probably spent too much money on for special occasions that I actually haven’t worn much. I somehow lost my old faithful flat cap, which still upsets me, and I have a beanie with the slogan ‘bald as shit’ embroidered on the front for winter. I feel a bit naked if I go outside without a hat these days.
I can recommend The Hat Store if you’re in Aus. Not sponsored, just a satisfied customer.
you might like the hat historian on youtube
Wear whatever you want. People are boring dipshits on average anyways, so why value their whining.
The current state of modern men with hats.
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
Depends on where you live. Sunhats are pretty normal around the world. Other types of men’s headwear are commonplace in specific countries, and some religions have religious men’s headwear.
You know you can still buy hats, right? Like any kind of hat you want. They’re still made. It’s just, we spend much less time outside, and outside is also much less dusty.
I know. And every time I try to find a hat in a store, they are all too small. So I guess that leaves online, but that’s a different experience to trying on the exact hat you’re going to buy.
I’ve played with the idea of buying a hat stretcher to broaden my thrifting possibilities…
I once found a Sterkowski flat cap in my exact size at a thrift shop. Been riding that high ever since. I also ordered online from them once with good results. Those are caps rather than hats, but it scratched the same itch for me.
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.
