Suddenly Senior
Suddenly Senior: Symbol of status, icon of style: the hat
By FRANK KAISER
Published August 30, 2005
Look at any outdoor photograph of American men taken before 1960 and you’ll see every man wearing a hat. Be it a fedora or homburg, slouch or porkpie, Panama or boater - hats used to be as essential as shoes, adding a fine flourish to proper manly appearance.
The hat was so common that it found its way into everyday language: “Keep it under your hat”; “My hat’s off to you”; “Pass the hat”; “Throw my hat in the ring.”
After graduating from college in the 1950s, my first stop, before finding a job, was to a hat shop to buy that period’s fundamental symbol of successful manhood. I chose a combination slouch/porkpie - a silly-looking lid that you see today only in reruns starring Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau.
Honestly, my porkpie made me feel like an adult for the first time in my life. It told the world that I was now a man of substance, someone not to be trifled with. In a Chicago winter, with wind chill factors of minus 40, it was also very practical.
Then, suddenly and without warning, hats were passe.
I wore my new porkpie about as long as I would wear my Nehru suit a decade later. The fashion was first wounded by a revolt against rigid postwar organizational standards, then single-handedly killed off the day Jack Kennedy attended his 1961 presidential inauguration - bareheaded.
By then, I was working at a Chicago advertising agency, where one of my first assignments was to help create a campaign for The Hat Council to make hats popular again. But it was like trying to bring back the buggy whip. I remember wishing that the revolt had been against neckties instead.
By 1966, even confirmed hat guy Frank Sinatra ditched his expensive fedora when he wed Mia Farrow. He couldn’t afford to look old-fashioned with a 21-year-old on his arm.
According to many, this is when man began his descent down the path of deterioration and ignominy, never again to feel that proud camaraderie with his fellow gent on the street.
Today, the best we have for our heads is the baseball cap, usually advertising some tractor, beer or bowling team. It’s a child’s hat, which, like shorts, grown men should never be seen in. Especially when worn backward.
How far into sartorial hell must man descend?
My old slouch/porkpie is long gone. I wonder what has taken the hat’s place as the symbol of entry into adulthood. Surely, nothing as stylish, substantial or striking.
I say, bring back the hat. We’ll all be far better for it.
- Frank Kaiser is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in Clearwater. His Web site, www.suddenlysenior.com includes nostalgia, trivia, senior humor and 111 Best Senior Links. Write Frank c/o Seniority, the St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail features@sptimes.com
SUDDENLY TRIVIA What is a hat block?: a. an ice hockey play; b. someone sitting in front of you in the theater wearing a large hat; c. a block or mold on which a hat is shaped and ironed.
Answer: c, a block or mold on which a hat is shaped and ironed.
