What Happened....

[Bolero]

1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's Mens hats were a necessity.....These days it's a Style only...

Why the change ???

 

[Mason Rudesheim]

I may be mistaken but from what I heard it was actually because of more attention to hair and hair styles that was common between the 60s-80s. Because the hat fell out of favor over perfectly kept hair, making the hat a style choice instead of part of the uniform of the average man. I remember also reading somewhere that the progression towards better hair care products lead to the ability to have highly maintained hair which brought about the demise of the hat in day-to-day life.

Of course this may be all lies that I've heard and read because I didn't live through any of those decades.

 

[BlueTrain]

It was always a style, never a necessity except in freezing cold weather and in that case, function took precedence over style. Wigs were in style at one time, too. Cowboy hats are widely available, you know, but I don't think I could pull off the look. Some of the "grown-ups" wore hats (men and women) when I was little, in the 1950s but hardly everyone. A few that I knew well never wore anything more than a baseball cap, although I remember a photo of one uncle--a baseball cap wearer--wearing a straw (I think) Panama style hat in the early 40s, before I was born. He nearly always wore nothing but the kind of gray or khaki work clothes that working men wore during that period. He also typically wore slip-on Romeo shoes.

However, I do not think it was men paid more attention to hair styles or that they had more highly maintained hair that led to hats going out of style. Older hairstyles were just as highly maintained as they've ever been. But different hairstyles may have been part of the reason. It's a little like asking why men don't wear three-piece suits anymore.

 

[BlueTrain]

I never knew any adult man who wore shorts when I was little but sandals were not unheard of. Otherwise, of the people I knew and saw all the time, all the men wore the same thing all the time, almost everywhere they went. If they went to church, and not all of them did, they wore a suit. They simply didn't own sports coats or blazers. But this reflects more of where and when I grew up than anything else.

Has anyone here seen anyone wearing a frock coat or a morning coat (tail coat) aside from a wedding, and in person? I don't even remember the last time I saw anyone wearing a dinner jacket. I've never worn one in my life.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The only place I've ever seen frock coats worn in public is at a Doctor Who convention.

Commercial fishermen in the Era wouldn't have been caught dead wearing coats and ties, that was strictly for yachtsmen and hobbyists. Fly fishermen were known for wearing their lures stuck into their hats, and middle-class fishermen would often loop their wristwatches around their hatbands so the watch wouldn't come off their wrist while they were casting, giving the hat some practical utility.

Note the sneakers on the middle guy.

My grandfather, a typical working-class man of the 1930s, owned one suit in his life. He was married in it in 1933 and was buried in it in 1980. Otherwise he wore work clothes, hard industrial shoes, and in the winter one of those Russian trooper hats. He owned one fedora, a filthy, greasy brown thing that he'd toss on the floor when he got home at night, but otherwise wore a green cotton baseball cap with a Texaco logo on the front.

Home movies taken in the Era reveal that it was very rare in our town for a man to be seen on the street in a suit, and while hats were worn they were usually old and battered, and often worn turned up in the front Ed Norton style. Caps were more common than hats, and the most common hat of all was a black-and-red checkered wool hunting cap with earflaps. The everyday apparel of the average man in our town was work pants, a flannel plaid shirt, and a heavy sweater or sweatshirt worn over the shirt with the shirt collar worn open over the neckband.

One major thing that helped to kill the hat in the 1950s was automotive styling -- the long, low silhouette pushed by the Boys in the latter half of the fifties made it increasingly difficult for a tall man to sit in a car with a hat on.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Many factors at work here. I remember reading one writer who referred to "that day in 1963 when my father and every other man in America stopped wearing a hat." Convenience was a factor. Cars got sleeker in the 50s. That meant the roof got lower, to the point where wearing a hat was unfeasible. If you take off your hat in a car, where do you put it? There's no convenient place. In the 50s the style center shifted from the Northeast to California, where informality prevailed. I can remember my father saying how surprised he was when he went into a bank in CA and saw men without their suit jackets on, some of them with their shirtsleeves rolled up. I believe the final blow was delivered by JFK. He wore a topper in his inaugural parade, the last president to wear one. After that, he wore a yachting cap on the water, but went hatless otherwise. He was very vain of his coiffure, which gave him that dashing, youthful look. The rest of male America followed suit (so to speak).

 

[BlueTrain]

Compared to most politicians, including all of those running for office today, JFK WAS young.

My father only wore a suit to church and other solemn occasions and he left it on all day on Sunday, too, until we moved to the country. A few men, though, I saw dressed up all the time. The pastor at church, for instance, who did not wear vestments, the undertaker who I saw everyday when I was in junior high school (he looked just like George Raft standing out in front of his establishment) and bankers. School teachers usually didn't wear a suit but a sports coat and slacks combination. My father continued to wear a hat as long as he continued to wear a suit.

Somewhere I have a photo probably taken at Virginia Beach and probably before 1930, maybe even before 1920. There are a number of men on the beach in white shirts and hats--straw boaters, of course. My wife said her grandfather, who I think died around 1970, always wore a suit, meaning every day, and he was retired.

 

[2jakes]

Note the sneakers on the middle guy.

My lucky fishing “chucks” !


http://www.esquireme.com/style/why-did-men-stop-wearing-hats

 

[BlueTrain]

About a third of the men in that photo are not in fact wearing hats. They're wearing caps! There is one bare-headed deviant in the photo, too. I see one police helmet in the photo and a couple of derby hats and even a couple of women, also hatted.

 

[BobHufford]

I think someone knocked the bare-headed deviant's hat off and he's giving them the stink-eye.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Baseball crowd, Brooklyn, NY, October 1, 1950. More hatless men than hatted, and no hatted women.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That old coot in the middle clearly paid more for his hat than he did his dentist.

 

[2jakes]

My all time favorite hat. My uncle had one.
If I could find one I’d wear it 24/7.
There’s been threads posted on the Fedora regarding this hat & what it is.
Some come close. So far I haven’t found one.

(Sorry Oppie, I had to remove that cigarette from your mouth)

( I give up...)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Baseball crowd, Boston, Mass., Summer 1942. Mix of hatted and hatless, with a number of uniform caps of different kinds. Note the man in the blue cap is wearing an air-raid warden's armband, denoting his presence in an official role. Note that the person at the right closest to the camera is wearing a scorecard with a hole torn in the middle as a sun visor. Note that the white-shirted, hatted man at the left is giving the Communist salute, perhaps in solidarity with umpire "Red" Ormsby.

 

[HudsonHawk]

If your hat is not first and foremost for function, you probably look like a doofus, irrespective of how stylish it is.

 

[Stearmen]

My all time favorite hat. My uncle had one.
If I could find one I’d wear it 24/7.
There’s been threads posted on the Fedora regarding this hat & what it is.
Some come close. So far I haven’t found one.

(Sorry Oppie, I had to remove that cigarette from your mouth)

( I give up...)

I have been wearing this hat for the last month. Kind of like Robert's hat. Just found out, it's a Conner Aussie Crusher Wool Western Cowboy Hat! Made in the USA. Incidentally, I get more compliments from people under 30, then anyone close to my age!

 

[BlueTrain]

In the 1950 photo of the Brooklyn baseball fans, you might note the perfectly correct period neckties (how could they be otherwise?). It's also a remarkably integrated crowd for the period, too. The men all appear to be wearing suits and not sport coats and one woman requires sunglasses. No one looks younger than twenty, either.

 

[Fading Fast]

My all time favorite hat. My uncle had one.
If I could find one I’d wear it 24/7.
There’s been threads posted on the Fedora regarding this hat & what it is.
Some come close. So far I haven’t found one.

(Sorry Oppie, I had to remove that cigarette from your mouth)

( I give up...)

Check out the TV series "Manhattan" (outstanding first season, decent but not as good second one) - The Oppenheimer character is wearing that hat or something very, very close to it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the 1950 photo of the Brooklyn baseball fans, you might note the perfectly correct period neckties (how could they be otherwise?). It's also a remarkably integrated crowd for the period, too. The men all appear to be wearing suits and not sport coats and one woman requires sunglasses. No one looks younger than twenty, either.

Look to the upper left -- there's a couple of kids sitting on the ledge with their legs hanging over. This was a standing-room only crowd, with the pennant at stake, so people were finding seats wherever they could find them.

Here's a shot from ten years earlier -- same ballpark, but in May instead of October. Not quite so formal.

Early 1940s, same park, another hot afternoon. Improvised headgear in action.

And here's one taken at Yankee Stadium during the 1947 World Series, as rowdy Brooklyn fans horrify staid boxholders from Westchester. Mostly a hatless bunch, but note that one fan is wearing a team cap

As far as integration goes, the only Major League ballparks to ever be legally segregated were those in St. Louis and Washington. After the arrival of Jackie Robinson in 1947, the Dodgers had a very strong African-American fanbase, and after some initial mutual wariness, the races mingled freely at the park. Didn't matter what color the players were, they were all wearing the same uniform.

 

[BlueTrain]

You have sharper eyes than I do (and a sharp mind and tongue!). There is even a man wearing something other than a suit but he is also wearing a necktie, loosely. All the photos are wonderful and capture images that could not easily be duplicated today. It is as if people actually look different. In actuality, though, they only look different in little ways and the sum of all the little differences means they look a lot different. The clothes, how the fit, the hairstyles, facial expressions even. 1947 must have been a good year for a lot of folks.

In the photo of the shirtless man smoking a pipe, there is a man behind him to his right holding cards in his hand. Do you suppose those are playing cards?