If you’re curious to see how men’s hats have evolved in the past 70 years or so, you have but to view some of the films of the 1940s and 1950s. You could count on seeing Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and their contemporaries sporting a hat in all kind of situations in comedies and dramas. This was the era of my youth and I remember vividly the fedoras of winter and panama hats of summer each time I took the New York City subways. They were an essential part of the fashion landscape and were part of the wardrobe of all subway riding businessmen. My father had several hats in his collection- maybe three or four fedoras, with the brim turned down, and wore them well into the early part of the 1960s.
Women, too, wore hats in those days but were far less obvious on subways though I do remember seeing them and their hats in restaurants or afternoon social gatherings. Some of their hats included a net-like veil that struck me as rather bizarre. Why did they want to hide their face? But then—what did a twelve year old kid know about fashions in the 1940s!
One of the strangest customs of the 1940s and 1950s was the freshman beanie. These were basically skull caps with a bill sporting the college logo and colors. I remember wearing one as an NYU freshman in 1953. I liked it a lot and enjoyed showing off my new affiliation. I wore it for about a week during our new student orientation but stopped shortly thereafter and don’t remember ever seeing them again either on campus or anywhere else. I think they lasted for a shorter period of time than those six-foot scarves with horizontal stripes in the school colors that college students wore in the 1950s and 1960s.
The wearing of hats at the time adhered to an unwritten code: men took them off in elevators and never wore them when seated at meals. They tipped their hats to ladies and held them to their chest at sporting events during the national anthem. Men removed them at the dinner table though women wore theirs. Radio ads helped popularize the fashion. One of the more frequent ads featured a female singing “I go for a man who wears an Adam hat.” The male retort was- “Well, if she feels like that, I’ll buy an Adam hat!” and it ended with the female re-singing the very first line. I heard this ditty many times while listening to ball games on WHN and WMGM. The big manufacturing site of men’s hats was Danbury, Connecticut. There was even a factory team in the 1930s known as the Danbury Hatters. The old relationship remains because even now, there’s a brand new hockey team in Danbury nicknamed the Mad Hatters.
The Kennedy era began in the 1960s and the new president didn’t wear the traditional top hat at his inauguration, or any hat, for that matter. This might well have been the beginning of the end of this fashion. It also marked my departure from New York City and I began to think less and less of hats in my travels. I remember seeing fewer and fewer during the 1970s and 1980s except, perhaps, for those wide-brim hats worn by women at college commencement exercises or other formal summer events.
It wasn’t until the 1980’s or so when the baseball cap appeared on the scene. They started out as a symbol of pride– a fashion statement telling others that you were a loyal fan of a particular baseball team. Though they had been fashionable for many years among the young, they became more and more ubiquitous. Soon caps began to sport logos, symbols and names of other establishments- sport-related and not. Football players on the sidelines were wearing caps when they weren’t wearing their helmets. In the 1980s and later, men and women began to wear caps in great numbers- especially the adjustable one-size-fits-all type that allowed wearers with a pony tail to display it. The true baseball fan, the serious believer, chose, instead, to wear the authentic sized cap that fitted perfectly the contour of his/her head.
During the 1980s, the baseball cap was adapted by many American companies as part of their uniform and it became internationalized as more and more people throughout the world began wearing them—first, caps of American teams and later on, those with the logo or symbol of other affiliations. Many organizations overseas, too, adopted them as part of their uniforms. I’ve seen French police wearing them in certain locales as well as fast-food employees.
The cap became more and more popular in the 1990s and soon college kids were wearing them backwards. This fad was to last about a decade or even longer and people in all walks of life were wearing them with the bill either in front or in back—students, actors, professors, workers in all industries, TV talk-show guests and citizens of all countries. The backward bill has diminished in recent years but the cap lives on. As for the fedora– they must be for old timers and for jazz musicians. One just doesn’t see many of them anymore.
The hat has undergone a major transformation. It was once a symbol of formality–something you wore for important occasions. In the ensuing years, it has become the hallmark of informality. People now wear them to dress down and both men and women go hatless on formal occasions. The etiquette of yore, too, has gone the way of the fedora; men no longer feel obliged to remove them neither while sitting down to eat nor when riding in elevators. As for women—they continue to wear them where and whenever they wish though, perhaps, do so to a lesser extent than a few years ago.