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?
I don’t like hoods or umbrellas so I wear hats in bad weather. Or strong sun.
Baseball caps are ok for bad weather since it stops the rain getting on my face, but if it’s really tipping it down I’ll often wear a waterproof, waxed-cotton bucket hat I have. In good weather I have my trusty tarp hat which is awesome.
Oh, yes, we also have hoodies, but it drives me absolutely crazy how useless cotton is in the rain and the cold.
I have a waterproof hoodie that looks like cotton. Unfortunately it doesn’t breathe or stretch like cotton, and most importantly the hood doesn’t stand up enough to keep the rain off
I ignore fashion and wear hats for good sun protection because Australia… Trend to opt for a legionnaire large enough to cover the face if needed.
Something like this:
I wear a coolie or conical straw hat when doing yard work.
They need to bring back nacho sombreros with queso in a divot at the top
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 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.
Intellectually, I know that’s preposterous. I hope you know that’s preposterous too.
But now this anecdote will exist as a speck of dust in the corner of my unconscious: the possibility that someone’s assuming my hat-wearing form is trying to hide my very-obvious baldness. I now wear my hat in defiance of your assumptions, and that’s heavier than I planned for my hat fashion.
Yes I know it’s my problem, not the hat wearing man’s problem. It’s from seeing guys on stage using hats that way, I think.
I wear hats. This is just confounds me.
And I am far from balding. What?
I want tricorns to come back in style
I just think they are neat.
I’ve seen bucket hats as well. Occasionally, a fedora
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…
Brother, that’s the Fonz.
Fez is from That 70s Show.
I still wear a covid mask. It’s still useful for disease prevention and looks nice.
And that is 100% okay. I just recently stopped but sure enough I put it own anytime I go to the dr or pharmacy. And all my coworkers that say they don’t feel good I just say go home. We will make due with out you.
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.
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.
Yeah it seems to work well for me. I do keep it pretty low over my face.
the head and face, while connected, may have different sunlight requirements.
I like the humble Ushanka
I wore these as my main winter hat for the longest time but had to switch to beanies when I worked in the trades. Now I’m struggling to justify the cost since I spend a lot less time outdoors in the winter…
But man, I love these hats.
I wear a flatcap every day. I consider this to be a hat, for all intents and purposes.
In my country those are the prerogative of old age.
In australia they have been adopted by skinheads (left), and neo nazis (skinheads right) although explicetly at war memorials
There are leftist skinheads hanging around war memorials, in Australia?
Ok, zoomer.
No, and I hate that it somehow became socially acceptable to wear them inside.
let me hide my baldness!
Why though? It’s a normal thing people’s bodies do. I also don’t get the whole “oh no a bald patch you must instantly go full cueball” attitude people sometimes have.
My reply was mostly tongue-in-cheek on my part. I’m actually really happy with being bald these days (finally) but it took a while and it’s a wild transition. Losing a full head of beautiful hobbit hair after having it for a quarter of a century is a pretty jarring adjustment when it happens in just a year or two.
You have to do it fashionably. Most men can’t do that. They wear a fedora without a skincare routine, they don’t wear fitting clothes and often don’t work to smell nice.
The result is similar to people who drive shitty cars with a stylized paint job. It just looks worse than a regular paint job now.
A skincare care routine is pretty far off the scale of what men do to take care of themselves, but I know what you mean (and have had natrually good skin). Everything is slovenly, but they put a fedora on top and think it makes them Gary Cooper.
