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Cars and hygiene killed the middle-class hat
- haspoken 6y agohttp://archive.is/vMEeN http://archive.is/vMEeN
- WalterBright 6y agoI've been wearing a hat outdoors for about 10 years now, since the doc carved pieces of flesh out of my forehead. It was annoying at first, but I grew to like it. It keeps the sunburn away. I was surprised how pleasant it made walking in the rain. It doesn't affect my hairstyle because my hair departed long ago. I do get ridiculed for it now and then, but one advantage of getting older is one stops caring about that, and if pressed I'll just tell 'em they'll change their mind after going under the knife.
- koolba 6y ago> since the doc carved pieces of flesh out of my forehead. Melanoma or fishing accident?
- WalterBright 6y agoFortunately not melanoma, but typical problems caused by sun damage.
- dwd 6y agoMelanomas are pretty drastic because they'll quickly spread cancer throughout your body, and require chemotherapy to prevent you from dying if not detected early enough. More common you can get carcinomas that doctors prefer to cut out. BCCs often look like a rough patch of skin that never heals while a SCC can be more wart-like and also spread locally if not dealt with. All are caused by sun damage.
- WalterBright 6y agoHad a friend die young (in 20s) from melanoma. Horrible disease.
- analog31 6y agoI find that putting on a big floppy hat is quicker and easier than applying sunscreen to my face. So I wear one during the summer when I'm outside. I keep an additional one at work for summertime lunch. The only obstacle is, when I'm outside, I'm often wearing a bike helmet.
- WalterBright 6y ago> quicker and easier than applying sunscreen to my face. Yup. It's not greasy, don't have to worry about missing a spot, don't have to wait the 20 minutes before it becomes effective, don't have to reapply it after a few hours, it doesn't expire, it doesn't smell like rotten coconuts, and it's very, very effective.
- SiVal 6y agoWait, Walter, what is this "wait 20 mins before it becomes effective"? Did I miss something? Aren't the standard ingredients simply opaque to UV frequencies right out of the bottle/tube?
- caw 6y agoThe standard Coppertone sunscreen says Directions: Apply liberally 15 minutes before sun exposure. Reapply: after 80 minutes of swimming or sweating; immediately after towel drying; at least every 2 hours I’ve always heard this as time to absorb to become waterproof, but I’m not sure if it’s actual skin absorption or the liquid used to convey the sun blocking compounds to dry or evaporate. Either way, apply and then wait.
- japanuspus 6y agoAlmost the same here. Picked up a Tilley had on impulse one day, and started using it for my scout evenings and trips. Before long, going outside without a had felt naked: a perfect piece of clothing for Scandinavian weather with showers, wind and sun.
- ben7799 6y agoThe King of all Hats!
- arp242 6y ago> I do get ridiculed for it now and then I have similar experiences with dyeing my hair in bright colours as a guy; most people react neutrally or positively, others ... not so much. There seems to be something of a cultural difference here too; in Ireland, New Zealand, and Indonesia I don't get too much grief from it, in the Netherlands ... meh. One guy (random stranger) even went so far as to shout "hey homo!" :-/ One of the aspects of my country I'm not especially impressed with. Overall, it's not a bad people filter. If you're the kind of person who would ridicule someone over hair colour or wearing a hat then you're probably not the kind of person I want to interact with if I have the choice. I'd rather know sooner than later.
- simlevesque 6y agothe same thing happened to me with my hair bleached. got told I was in the wrong toilet... for your filter analogy, tattoos have a similar effect. one of my smartest friend has a great education with merit... and knuckle tattoos. he never wasted any time with a company that would not respect his life choices outside the job.
- justnotworthit 6y agoThe opposite is true, as well: You attract the people who you're more likely to get along with. A similar thing is said about guys with long hair (or any fashion/appearance niche): Not everyone prefers it, but for the ones who do, you're in short supply.
- dwd 6y agoSame. Had a SCC cut out where my hair is thinning above my forehead back in March, but the lockdown put a hold on finding and trying out a nice felt hat - still a month off having to go back into the office. I wonder if there's a noticable correlation between head cancers and the end of traditional hat wearing?
- WalterBright 6y agoCould be. When I was young I went to Hawaii and got a bad blistering burn on my forehead, and I was only out for 15 minutes. I suspect that was the root cause.
- dwd 6y agoI never wore sunscreen in my youth and pretty sure that's going to come back for me eventually. Everyone was doing Reef Sun Tan oil before the ozone hole days and Slip, Slop, Slap (I'm Australian) which was basically basting youself in coconut oil.
- moron4hire 6y agoGetting older, getting married, and having kids: all things that have significantly contributed to the shockingly low levels of care I give to the opinions of strangers and acquaintances.
- ww520 6y agoYes. I found wearing a baseball cap or golf cap help to reduce sunburn. It makes a difference during driving, especially when the top is down.
- scarygliders 6y agoMy wife is Japanese. She trained as a Milliner, and has been desinging and making hats for decades. She's a damn great milliner. She won 1st prize in The Worshipful Company of Feltmakers of London competition, in the 90's. She worked for Philip Treacy. She's been in numerous magazine and newspaper articles. There is only one problem: no one buys hats these days :/
- schoen 6y agoAny chance you could link to some of her work? Not that it would make that much difference in the overall scheme of things, but I bet a lot of people reading this comment are curious now!
- asguy 6y agoYah, I’m always looking for a good hat.
- scarygliders 6y agoApologies for the late response. I've been a tad busy :) https://tocofashion.com/ https://tocofashion.com/ is her site. You'll find it's mostly high fashion designs for women, but she has (and can) design and make hats for men.
- schoen 6y agoThanks, those are very, very nice! It's true I have no need for such a hat, but I appreciate your sharing them and hope some other HN reader does. If I think of an occasion that calls for a specific hat, I'll try to keep her business in mind. :-)
- scarygliders 6y agoApologies for the late response. I've been a tad busy :) https://tocofashion.com/ https://tocofashion.com/ is her site. You'll find it's mostly high fashion designs for women, but she has (and can) design and make hats for men.
- brightball 6y agoI’ve often wondered about getting a more wide brimmed hat as I get older, but I find that baseball cap does the job just fine.
- war1025 6y agoSomeone really thought this comment deserved a downvote? How is this not a relevant comment? Baseball caps and winter hats are the default hats worn by most people these days. There is little reason to go back to something more traditional, as classy as that could potentially be.
- WalterBright 6y agoThat'll work if you let your hair cover your ears.
- vondur 6y agoAs George Costanza said "What a bald paradise that must have been. Nobody knew" referring to the 20's and 30's when everyone wore hats.
- toomanybeersies 6y agoI've come to really appreciate good hats, especially good bush hats (think Crocodile Dundee type cowboy hat) when I'm in the bush. They don't just keep the sun out of your eyes. They keep your head warm when it's cold outside and cool when it's sunny. They keep your head dry when it's wet, but don't end up drenched in sweat.
- robgibbons 6y agoThey also make boonie hats with retractable bug netting. You can forget it's there until you really need it. After a really buggy May/June trip I never go camping without mine.
- aequitas 6y agoThough everyone keeps referring to me as cowboy, I love wearing my Australian Barmah hat. It keeps my head and glasses dry when I go for a walk in the rain. And in the summer it keeps me cool and prevents the sweat from running down into my eyes. Best feature is that because it's kangaroo leather I can mistreat it more (like folding it into my pocket) than wih a cowhide leather hat.
- StavrosK 6y agoHow do they keep your head cool? Whenever I wear one, my head always ends up drenched, because there's no air.
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- basicplus2 6y agoPeople arn't wearing enough hats...
- doublesCs 6y agoPeople aren't wearing enough hats for what purpose?
- phaemon 6y agoFor covering their heads, presumably.
- basicplus2 6y agohttps://youtu.be/O2QJvc_SxFQ https://youtu.be/O2QJvc_SxFQ
- fortran77 6y agoAs a Jewish man, I come from a long-line of hat-wearers. And I get a lot of complements from people on my hats when I'm out and about. Men are curious about them, as if the want to wear them, but fear looking silly.
- mirimir 6y agoSome of the orthodox hats are just so cool. Black. Rakish. Almost streamlined.
- BanazirGalbasi 6y agoMy experience wearing a hat on my college campus was similar. I found a faux leather fedora (same style as Indiana Jones) and I'd wear that for sun and rain. I don't think anybody said anything negative about the hat, but I got several compliments on it. People like hats, they just worry too much about what others think of them.
- canada_dry 6y ago> dried up in just a few generations I think a decade from now they'll be analyzing the even more rapid demise of suits and briefcases. I remember when 'casual dress Fridays' started. A leading men's shop took out full page ads in the newspaper extolling the virtue of looking professional vs. casual. They've since gone bankrupt.
- pantaloony 6y agoI hope we don’t lose the blazer and sport coat, at least. They’re great. Like a purse for men, but even better than that because you wear them. Unlike winter coats or hoodies they’re not shlubby-looking and you can wear (appropriate cloth & weight) ones in almost any weather. I’m OK with the suit going but damn, without those there’s not much left for guys to wear that’s not athletic wear of some kind or another (and hell, sport coats kinda are anyway)
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> there’s not much left for guys to wear that’s not athletic wear of some kind or another (and hell, sport coats kinda are anyway) Sport coats are athletic wear? To me, a sport coat is the same thing as a suit jacket, with the only difference being that a sport coat isn't the same color as your pants. It will literally become a suit jacket if you put on matching pants. For example, a sport coat, very much unlike athletic wear, will prevent you from raising your arms too high with its big squared shoulders.
- jwilliamson 6y agoSport coats evolved from riding and shooting jackets. I suspect some mobility has been lost over the years, but neither of those sports requiring raising your arms very high.
- pantaloony 6y agoExactly. A lot of what's available to men these days is former athletic/sporting wear turned "athleisure", then sometimes losing much of the original association: button-down collar shirts (there's a reason they're traditionally made of relatively tough Oxford cloth, and the collar's buttoned down so it stays that way during vigorous activity), polos (invented for tennis), sport coats (hunting, riding), "rugby" shirts (obviously). Then our most popular outerwear shirt, the T-shirt, used to be underwear with a strong military association, and came into common use the same way much of the rest of our modern fashion did: youth culture, which AFAIK is also how we got the blazer (dad's orphaned suit jackets) and two-button and especially two-roll-three suit jacket styles (kids wearing hand-me-down 3 and 4 button suits and orphaned jackets "casually" with fewer buttons done up).
- ngngngng 6y agoI would love to add more hats to my wardrobe. But I can't shake the thought that a man in a hat that's not a baseball cap just looks like he's trying too hard.
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- Digit-Al 6y agoPeople will judge you on many things, so what's one more item on the list. If you like the hat and think it makes you look good then wear it and damn the judgemental types.
- forgotmypw17 6y agoI spend a lot of time in unfamiliar environments as I travel, and now and then, this results in banging my head against something, followed by, "I can't believe I did that again, I've got to be more careful." Recently, when it was cold, while I was wearing a couple of hats and a couple of hoods, I happened to bang my head into an object above me, something which happens to me infrequently, but regularly. Because of all the padding, I felt the impact, but it did not hurt me nearly as much as it normally would have. Since then, I've been wearing one or two thick hats most of the time, and this habit has already saved me from that very unpleasant experience of hitting my head on a sharp corner. People ask me if I'm warm, but I barely notice it. I think that, as also with sleeping in a thick blanket, my body adjusts and just produces less heat.
- lvturner 6y agoFrequently wear a baseball cap (that counts as a hat? Right?) on weekends thinning hair, pale skin and a subtropical climate pretty much mandate it - and the extra shade certainly improves the efficiency of my sunglasses! A lot of people use umbrellas here for the same purpose, but with dense crowds, overhead obsticles and tying up a hand... I'd rather wear some form of hat while out and about!
- WalterBright 6y agoA baseball cap works for the forehead but does nothing for the tops of the ears. A fellow I know had the top quarter of one of his ears sliced off by the dermatologist.
- totetsu 6y agoSome places still wear hats. https://vitamindwiki.com/%22No+hat,+no+play%22+in+Australia+primary+schools https://vitamindwiki.com/%22No+hat,+no+play%22+in+Australia+... https://blog.coolibar.com/school-hat-contest/ https://blog.coolibar.com/school-hat-contest/
- jacobsenscott 6y agoSometimes I wear a cowboy hat for fun, but they are terrible in any condition. Outside they blow away because of the wide brim. If you forget to take it off before getting in a car it will either catch on the door frame, or the headrest will knock it off your head. If you wear it inside the brim will knock into something and make you look like a doof.
- harperlee 6y agoCommon etiquette says that you dont wear hats indoors unless you are in service or a woman, I heard somewhere.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago> in service Interesting; in British English in service applied to a human being means in domestic service, like the servants in Downton Abbey; applied to inanimate objects it means that they are functioning or that a bus, for instance, is ready to take passengers. This isn't meant to say that your way of saying it is wrong by the way.
- 0xffff2 6y agoI'm pretty sure that's the meaning GP was going for. The only other meaning I can think of would be "serving in the military", which (in the US at least) would be "in the service" and anyway members of the military also remove their hats indoors except in certain specific circumstances.
- harperlee 6y agoI meant arms service; in military/police duty. Probably mistranslation from spanish “de servicio”!
- doodlebugging 6y ago>Outside they blow away because of the wide brim. Easiest way to fix this is to fit the hat to your head like they used to do in the way back whens. This technique works for felt hats and straw hats. When your hat is new it is unlikely to fit your head well since head shapes differ so widely. A old cowboy method of fitting the hat to the head will work perfectly every time. Wet the hat and the sweat band and put it on your head until the band has shaped to fit your head with no pressure points so that it contacts all the way around your head. Then just wear it until it dries. It will always fit your head perfectly and will not blow off in the wind. You can do the same thing with ill-fitting boots. Just get them wet, slip them on and walk around wearing them till they dry. They will fit your feet like a glove. I'm with you on the headrest thing. That's the main reason I no longer wear a hat when I drive. You have to remove the headrest for that to be practical. Years ago before headrests in pickups were a thing I wore a hat everywhere. For a while I got around it by rolling the back of the brim up so it curled enough to fit with a headrest but that defeats the purpose of the brim. I can see 8-9 cowboy hats right now from where I'm sitting. They each fit a specific person in my family. That's one of the reasons behind it being really bad form for someone to grab your hat and shove it on their head, the hat is fit for an individual and though it may look nice on them, it won't fit - plus it's disrespectful to mess with a man's hat. Way back in my own way back whens, I boarded my horse with an old cowboy who told stories of his younger days rodeoing and riding. At one time he held the calf-roping record time he set at Madison Square Garden. Him and some of his cowboy friends, his sidekicks, were wranglers in the 40's and 50's for movie studios in California. He had worked with Tom Mix, Gene Autry, and others and taught the lead character from Rawhide (can't remember his name) to mount and ride a horse since he had never been on one when he got the part. He wrangled their herd for that old show. Anyway, getting long here but he told me a story one time about one of the stars he had worked with who couldn't or wouldn't wear a hat, saying that he had a head too much like a nickle watermelon and a hat just wouldn't stay on it. I was reminded of that by your comment about losing your hat in the wind. Hope this helps someone.
- 082349872349872 6y agoCars also produced the tuxedo/smoking, because tails were not so compatible with bench seats.
- mrtnmcc 6y agoWidespread pandemic hair might be just the luck hats needed.
- mathw 6y agoIf I could get a nice wide-brimmed sunhat that didn't blow off in the slightest breeze I'd be a happy man indeed.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoAdd a hat band to it to weigh it down. I did that with a really cheap Ebay Chinese broad brimmed hat. My hat band is made of Norwegian one kroner coins that have a hole in the middle, Some colourful string and fifteen coins makes a band heavy enough to keep the hat down most of the time. But sometimes that isn't enough so I added a stampede string (actually a bootlace) with a toggle so I could strap it tight when it's really blowing.
- ben7799 6y agoYou want a Tilley Hat... prized by boaters for not falling off in even the stiffest of winds, keeps your head/shoulders from burning in the sun, floats, and nearly invincible.
- bencollier49 6y agoI think the key to the whole thing might be buried towards the end of the article: "Students began to go without hats as a sign of status". Is it not likely that as car-owners began to shirk hats - and presumably they would have been more affluent - hats were increasingly worn predominantly by poorer people? Not unlike a tan was originally considered unfashionable as it meant you had been working in the sun? I bet you could find other examples that confirmed that this was a fashion driven by lifestyle changes amongst the upper-middle class.
- pantaloony 6y agoHaving a tan in colder latitudes in the Winter/Spring was fashionable because it meant you'd "Wintered" or at least had a long Winter vacation somewhere sunny, which means you could afford (having the time, freedom, and money) to "Winter" at all. Tanning beds killed that, of course.
- Semaphor 6y agoI have 3 hats: A seaweed one for summer (very light, protection from the sun), a felt one (warmth and some rain protection) and a faux-leather stetson (sun/rain and very sturdy, so I tend to take it on flights and for festivals). Mainly utilitarian, but I also like how they look. And I find caps hideous. While there aren’t many people with hats, there are some (most, but not all, older than me; I’m 34). Never gotten a weird look or comment regarding my hats. We have a dedicated hat-store (split, one for women and one for men) 2 streets over and usually when I walk past there is at least one customer.
- nerfhammer 6y agoMy half-baked theory has been that nobody wears hats on TV because you wouldn't be able to see their faces as well, and people started imitating that.
- rags2riches 6y agoGame of Thrones was irritating me in every other scene with the complete lack of headgear. It stuck out so badly in that setting.
- ben7799 6y agoThey don't mention that so few people have served in the military these days. Wearing hats could have easily been more popular because so many more men were veterans back in the days after WWI and WWII. They would have been used to wearing hats after being in the service. The time hats started dropping off in popularity also correlates with the rise of the anti-war movement brought on by the Vietnam war. Also in the 1960s the Catholic Church stopped requiring women to wear hats in church.
- retrac 6y agoMen wearing hats in the West predates the military mass mobilization and conscription of the 20th century.
- rm445 6y agoA question on a related topic, then: given that hats are dead, how can a person appear reasonably good if they want to wear a hat for comfort/practical reasons? Clearly one of the big no-nos is mixing formal and casual. Fedora wearers without a suit, also the weird college-student fad of wearing a waistcoat ("vest") with casual clothing, much ridiculed. But on the other hand, wooly hats and baseball caps are more casual than a lot of general leisure and business clothing. We have the flat cap, but here in England that seems like an affectation unless you're from particular places where it's traditional. What alternatives are there?
- domrally 6y agoAlongside casual vs formal I think we see workwear and sportswear consistently evolve into fashionwear. I see the baseball cap as an example of that. Baseball caps were originally worn by players. I think the bucket hat is another example, traditionally worn by fishers and farmers. Both of these hats came in around 150 years ago. Knit or woolly caps on the other hand have been used for over 1000 years. I think it's safe to think the knit hat will be around for many more generations
- Supermancho 6y agoI have a huge randomly flowing mane that can only be curbed with hats (short - a cap, or long - a soft beanie). I've worn them for more than 20 years.