Riding the Waves to Eternity

I was reading through the Blog of an acquaintance this morning and found myself thinking about hats and the wearing thereof by men.  One of the things which is immediately noticeable when watching archive or newsreel footage from before WW2 is that the men and boys are always wearing a hat.  In the UK this seems predominantly to have been the working man’s cloth cap, with Bowlers and Trilbies for the middle classes, and the American urban footage has plenty of Fedoras on show (and could you imagine Phillip Marlow without a Fedora)?

Why do we no longer do that? Why did it stop?   There remains the ubiquitous baseball cap of course – easily the best thing invented for keeping the rain off one’s glasses – but this does not, in the UK, have the same cultural feel about it.

Although Kirstin mutters darkly about it I like hats and I like wearing them: caps of course – baseball or my favourite grey Fisherman’s cap (I have a dark blue Breton one too but Lindsay keeps stealing it), my Panama in summer, a Fedora when out dancing, all good.  I used to like cloth caps too but it became expensive when I kept leaving them in taxis or on buses.  Floppy summer hats are always good and I have my Barmah soft and floppy sun hat still, bought in Darwin, NT, Australia in 1998.

It doesn’t seem to be like this elsewhere in Europe where the wearing of a hat continues to be taken seriously.  I remember in Vienna in late 2008 being struck by the number of hat makers in the City and their window displays of top-quality products; you have to love a city which gives so much time to the art of the noble Fedora!

In Rome or Paris to wear a fine hat is a sign that the wearer is saying yes to life and yet in the UK wearing much beyond a baseball cap is taken to be de facto evidence of eccentricity and to invite sniggers and giggles.

Sad.

The photos here are of yours’ truly modeling the new Mons Meg t-shirts by the way.  Every rapper team should have one.