Yes, I always liked wearing a hat, but I don't know how women feel about that. Steve in Baltimore County.

Nonononononoooo! Hats for women means that hair has to be cut so that a hat can be worn. Let's don't go down that road ever again!

I remember all too well when women had to wear hats because it was fashionable. I didn't like it then. I sure wouldn't like it now. I had a whole shelf in my closet with hat boxes....can't wear the same hat with every outfit, you know.

As for the men, a knit hat makes much more sense, if it's cold, than a something that blows off in the slightest breeze. They don't stay on. There's nothing quite like watching a dignified man chase his hat down a windy street.
Men would have to watch their haircuts too. There's nothing worse than a man with a thick head of hair that just took his hat off.

But I agree, they can look classy with the correct outfit. Especially the wide brim ones like women wear at the Kentucky Derby on Derby Day.

On inaguration day, they'd make a nice touch.

Men look grand in a brimmed hat. Knit caps are more practical than decorative. Don't they look best on the very young?

Oooh, Agnesp,
You seem to feel about hats, the way i feel about girdles, just plain grim.
What a great, passssionate response! :)
For women, think of the hats in the old movies from the thirties. You could wear them in restaurants [but not theatres]. And yes, wearing them often would be very tiresome, But sometimes they would make a wonderful focus, and frame for the face.
Remember when Catholic women still wanted to have something on their heads, even after it wasn't required? Then, they wore velvet bows with some pretty netting. They were close to perfect. They didn't mess up your hair, yet added a touch of color. Something small, like coils of velvet cord, might be nice too.
Would optional, work for you? Or would you end up feeling roped in, by somthing you lack full enthusiasm for?

I was on the edge of the hat era....always to church and always to a luncheon, or out to dinner.
I had a few cloche style hats that covered a multitude of sins and a few perch on the top of your head styles where the hair had to be just so.
I still wear a hat a lot in the summer...keeps the sun out of my eyes! and I have a felt Fedora sort of hat which works veryw ell for things like fall football games where it's too late to wear straw but yous till have the sun to deal with.
Linda C

Credit JFK for killing the men's hat industry when he appeared everywhere without one. And I guess the late 1960's killed the women's hat business, so maybe it's yet another thing people came blame the baby boomer generation for.

I remember the giant hat department at the downtown Marshall Field store in Chicago. When did it totally disappear? I think sometime in the 1970's.

Personally I think these are the wrong economic times to bring back expensive fashion accessories that have been dead for over 30 years.

Marshall Field sold giant hats?

Is that one of the traditions Macy's isn't carrying on? :)

The big, teased hair-dos with tons of hair spray ended the hat era overnight. That was in the late 60s. There was no way a woman could even put a flower or piece of lace on for church.

It was sooooo silly, if you sang in a robed church choir, you just HAD to have a hat for church just like all the other ladies. I remember putting one on for the ride to church, taking it off for the choir, and then putting it back on for the ride home.

The poor men had it worse. Just two or three wearings and the inside hat band was icky with hair oil. Then, it began to stink. It wouldn't take long before he needed to replace the hat. Sitting in a choir, I could look out and tell which men wore hats to church. They would be the ones that needed to comb their hair and had a mark around the skull where the hat had sat.

Sheila, that's very funny! LOL

I remember my father wearing a fedora in the winter and a *straw boater* in the summer. Since my mother was Catholic, she always wore a hat to Mass. Heck, I remember wearing a hat to church (Protestant) till the late 60s. Some of them were pretty funny-looking, too.

Ha! Ha! Shelia. It was the hat department that was huge - almost 1/2 of an entire floor that took up a city block in downtown Chicago. Even back in the early 1960's the hats cost $$$$$ - $40.00 & $50.00 & up.

And I remember getting a hat every Easter through high school. They started out as little things that resembles fat hair bands, but as the years progressed, I distinctly remember a Jackie Kennedy-like pillbox. They went with the spring dress coats we also had in light weight wool in pastel colors. Does anyone else remember those?

Here's a site, with Hat to Hemline looks.
er, wow.
Small luxuries, can be very fortifing.
Keep scrolling down, there's lot's of wowza fashion.

Love hearing the woes and joys of hats. Thanks

Here is a link that might be useful: Lots of ensembles from Hattie Carnegie.

Great site, Florey, but that dress that cost $40.00 in 1934 would be the equivalent of $640 today which ain't chicken feed.

Still looking at her designs, I was struck at how great they all looked. I guess classic design is truly timeless.

Please, please no hats! I had a blue boater type as little girl and promptly managed to conveniently loose it when I was about 5. My next two hats I had to get when I was 20, my father even paid for them. I wore one once and ditched both of them and that was the end of that.
Hats, male or female, some people look good in them and others just look funny.

I got married in a pillbox (turqoise organdie) made for me by a milliner and paid for by my husband's mother. She was so depressed that we weren't getting married in church so I suppose she had to contribute something to our cheap wedding. I later gave the hat to our children's daycare center to put in the dressing up box. I regret that now as I will never again own a hat made especially for me. I own 6 hats now but I wear only the simplest of them, a brown velvet squashy one. My hair is never perfect enough for some of the others, like the fedora in hunting green or the purple derby.

Marianne in Sweden (celebrating my 42nd wedding anniversary on the 26th of this month, hatless)

I made a hat for my MIL two weeks ago - she loves hats, and still has boxes and boxes of the various hats she's owned, and can tell you where she wore them. She deeply regrets the passing of 'hat fashion' and loves to see that hats are still worn for weddings and summer social events in the UK.

I made a pill-box hat for her a couple of years ago, covered in blue satin to match her dress, for a grandson's wedding. She looked great. She asked me if I could make her another one, in fake leopard fur fabric that she'd found, because her hair is thinning and she's quite self-conscious about it. She sent me the fabric, and I made the hat frame, then covered it and lined it, made a matching scarf and sent it back. It actually looked really good, and although I don't think I could carry off that fabric, I know she can.

I LOVE hats. And make a point of wearing them to daytime weddings Over Here ("she's wearing a hat!" - " yes, but she's English. They Do That").

Happy anniversary, Marianne in Sweden, and welcome to the Garden Party. Hope to see you often here.

The last hat I remember wearing was a cloche covered in tiny black feathers which cost me a month's allowance in the early fifties but worth every penny. My college roomie was Catholic and she insisted I could go to Protestant Church at 11 or I had to go to noon mass with her. My love of sleeping late won out as I wasn't very religious but I got my wear out of that hat. The nice thing about the cloche was it covered the bed-mussed hair so well.

The kids seem to enjoy hats nowadays but they sure aren't the formal types...lol If I never saw another baseball cap I'd not mind, especially worn backwards. josh

Hats do have their problems, but when they work, they look great. They have to work with the shape of your head,[few did on me], Stay on[ ditto-hair probs], be storable, hmm.
Well, there are difficulties. Yet, there is something lovely and gracious about them. And they can help distract from flaws.

Maybe, I just miss seeing them on others.
I miss them, but only for the option of accenting a special occasion. Ya know what? I'd go nuts if they became expected again. But, I miss them.
Maybe the kids will upgrade to more elegant styles as they get older.

I sort of like wearing (brimmed) hats--they're sort of like sunglasses in that they give you an extra little zone of privacy. I didn't grow up in a time or religion in which they were the custom, and I wouldn't want to feel I had to wear one, but it would be nice if they were commonplace enough that you didn't feel like instantly overdressed wearing one.

I was just thinking about how hard the hat industry once was on the bird population and found the article linked below. It's on millinery trimmings. I found especially interesting the comments on ostrich feathers being for "mature" women and bird breasts for "elderly" women. And I'm trying to picture what a hat made out of a bird's breast would look like. With Thanksgiving around the corner, the images in my head are downright ludicrous.

Here is a link that might be useful: old article on hat trimming

That was a great link - I wonder whether 'bird breast' refers to an entire bird? On one of those enormous Edwardian hats? Like you, I enjoyed reading about the distinctions between trimmings suitable for young, mature and elderly ladies - not something you see so openly these days!

I went a little farther into the vintage sewing site's hat section and found further nuggets of information, among them that snub-nosed women should not wear turbans, hats that extend farther than one's shoulders are "inartistic" and that lamp or gaslight can affect the color of one's hat: "The arc light and Welsbach gas mantle have an excess of blue, which is imparted to colors."

Surprisingly enough, many of the older apartment buildings in my neighborhood still have mantled gas lights out near the street. I'll have to go stand beneath one of them next spring and see if my Buzz-Off mosquito hat looks any more or less tan (I predict it will look no less dorky).

Thanks so much dirtdiver, for the cool article. Thanks for mentioning the privacy, that comes with sun protection too. And feeling like you'd look different.
This hat stuff is more fun/wider scoped, than I thought. love hearing the remeniscences[sp- sorry]. The whole bird angle too, wish there were other light wispy trims.

I just wanted Sen. [?] Mr.[?] Obama to look dashing and intrepid like Harrison Ford or Humphrey Bogart. I've never seen a fedora look bad on a guy. It's a chick magnet, [ So sorry for that expression] rather than those awful truck caps, that work the other way. Really short side hair, doesn't dent, and guys don't use greasy kid stuff anymore. You know though, even in grade school the guys would all carry those little black rubber combs in their pockets. Was it because their dads needed them a lot, for a quick run through?

I'm so tired of those knit caps. Bring back the brim!

Well, dang!!
I just googled around for an example on the web. The gorgeous ones are expensive, as in 200 bucks. whew! With the cheap ones, neither the cut or the fabric look as good, or like they'd last.

I still think hats at the inauguration would be nice.

Well, dang!!
I just googled around for an example on the web. The gorgeous ones are expensive, as in 200 bucks. whew! With the cheap ones, neither the cut or the fabric look as good, or like they'd last.

I still think hats at the inauguration would be nice.

Bird breast are the very soft, very short, tiny quilled feather from the breast of birds. I remember very well elderly women wearing the tiny pillboxes decorated with a gazillion flat, downy feathers all over them, sometimes with a tiny veil. When my flock molts, I can't look at them, when I am raking up the fluff, without thinking of those hats.

I adore hats, but they don't like me. I inherited a large head for a woman, and I've never found a woman's hat to really fit me, aside from knit ones. The first hat I ever bought myself, was to wear to an afternoon tea, and it was a military affair, and the hat was sort of obligatory. I stopped at a market afterward, all dressed up and the wind caught it, and it took off like a frisbee. LOLOL. I chased it halfway across the parking lot before somebody left tire treads on it. It was straw, and very wide brimmed. Fast forward to recent history. I asked Santa Claus one years to bring me a winter hat in which to travel. Something other than a knit toboggan. Bingo, I don't know where she found it, but it is a brimmed cloche, black and felty. Nice. I wears it when I was visiting in England some years back, and feeling very finished. Not too formal, not too sporty. That is until I get the pictures back. I'm looking at myself in the photographs, and thinking...wow......that isn't very flattering. My daughter figured out why. It made me look like Boy George. rofl.

It hangs on a hook outside my antique clothes press. It's a pretty accent for my room, but not my head.

Calliope, what hilarious hat stories!
Maybe it's the fear of looking foolish, or different that keeps people from wearing them.
This era does seem to have a sort of hat free attitude, inertia, that isn't shifting.

Here is Stetson's, top of the line, a beaver fedora. Maybe a homburg would be more formal. Wish it were in a dark charcoal, without the feather.
If any one has other suggestions or photos, they would be fun to see.

Gee, I hope they wear hats. ....It will be cold.

Wonder what people will wear to the inaugural balls?

I have long hair, well longish now since I just had a foot of it whacked off. I find headgear useful when working. My mother always wore a kerchief when she was doing serious cooking, and I sometimes do as well. Likewise I'm liable to plop on one when I'm out spading ground, or vegetable gardening to keep the mound of hair secure. I'm seriously thinking of making a couple flannel mob caps to plop on my head for winter sleeping. We like to keep the rooms very cool to sleep and bundle on quilts or heavy blankets. It's an old saying keeping your head warm is the most important part of bundling up, and it's the only thing peeking out of the covers. And really, hats, caps and scarves have saved my behind on bad hair days when I had to be out with the public.

Didn't Jack Kennedy wear a stove pipe top hat when he was inaugurated?

Regardless of political bent, you gotta admit Mr. Obama is a very pleasant person to look at. He'd look super in the fedora.

Maybe he would look good, maybe not. He is a fine looking man, no doubt about it.... But, there was a picture in this mornings paper...he has big ears. They don't lay close to his skull. I tried to imagine him with a hat. We wouldn't want to see the tips of those ears bent over, and for a hat to miss his ears, it would have to sit too high on his head.

Anyway, I think it's time that they got more sensible about having the oath administered outdoors in January. OK, so it's about having room for lots and lots of people, and it's traditional, but sometimes it's just plain COLD!

I can't remember which president it was, but it was snowing! And there they stood, thousands of people, in the snow! That's tradition for you....it doesn't always make sense.

Well, this one.......I think does, as bizarre as that sounds. Yes, we can get cameras inside to capture the moment, but it's like the ball falling in Times Square. More than ever, the people need to feel like they are an individual part of their government. Seeing the inauguration with your own two eyeballs has a lot of significance. Fifty years from that occasion you are telling your grandchildren you were 'there', you saw it.

Other than the officials and their staff, and law enforcement and the press, it's completely voluntary. One can opt out to sit in front of their fireplaces and beam it in Scottie.

I also like to see barristers wear wigs, and mourn the loss of the nursing cap. Maybe I'm not completely objective? LOL.

I think he looks kind of hunky in a hat,at least when he was younger he did.

{{gwi:196783}}

Actually, of all the pictures coming out of the woodwork, if any of them made me relate to him at all, this one would have to be it. I enjoy seeing bigger than life people caught being just human.

I suppose he didn't inhale :)

I don't know Sheila. He has what Christy used to call when she saw it on me back in the day.. that slitty eyed look. ;->

What a surprise!

EBAY knows Hattie Carnegie!

If you go there, be sure you check ahthenticity.

I think he said, when asked about whether he inhaled or not

"Of course I inhaled. Isn't that the point?"

(reported several times during the campaign. I much prefer such honesty!)

He doeslook good in a hat!
;-)