The men’s fedora hats has taken a massive toll over the last hundred years. A must-have accessory for a man, the fedora and its relatives named trilby, bowler, Homburg, porkpie, etc., disappeared from the men’s wardrobe in the second half of the 20th century.
For most of our history, the man and the hat have been inseparable. This is neither good nor bad, just a reflection of changing customs. The fedora is one of the most classic models of modern men’s headgear, and men wear them at different levels of formality. Its use gradually diminished from the 1950s onwards until it became an eccentric accessory.
But Why Is It So Hard To Wear A Fedora These Days?
The formality of men’s clothing continues to wane, so coming across a man wearing a suit and hat is extremely rare. The main reason is apparent. A person in a hat is something rare, and that’s why people find it strange. Even someone perfectly lined up tends to attract more dubious looks than someone in a cap or beanie.
And, as is to be expected, younger people are often still not as comfortable or mature in their style. When they decide to wear an accessory that has low acceptance by the general public, any slip-up is enough for others to turn up their noses.
What Is A Fedora Hat?
The term “fedora” first emerged in the early 1890s when it was related to a play entitled Fédora, in which the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt wore a soft, creased felt hat. Fedora is not a specific type of hat. It’s a basic set of features that give rise to hundreds of variations on the style, from the wide-brimmed gangster hats of the 1920s to the narrower, more modern ones favored by singer Frank Sinatra in the 50s and 60s.
A hat fedora is:
- Any soft felt hat was made from fur felt, although today, there are options in fabric felts.
- With a creased crown of approximately 10 cm to 15 cm in height.
- The brim is soft and malleable, 5 cm to 10 cm wide, and can be adjusted up or down.
- It is “deepened” into the canopy as if someone has pinched it.
One of the hallmarks of this hat is that it can be shaped, creased, sized, and folded in endless combinations based on the wearer’s preference.
How Was The Fedora Hat Used In The Old Days?
When hats were mandatory, dress codes dictated rules for each social situation, with appropriate hats for each moment. A respectable gentleman’s complete collection included a top hat, bowler hat, Homburg, Lord’s Hat, berets, and a soft felt hat.
The Homburg was the formal hat of choice for the upper classes (Winston Churchill’s WWII hat), but in 1924, the Prince of Wales wore a fedora. As always, the prince had a tremendous influence on the style of the time and popularized the hat in the mainstream.
Other factors contributing to the model’s popularity over the next four decades were the scarcity of shellac for hard hats during the war and the shift in fashion in the 1920s to a more casual direction. If you’re a fan of old movies, you can notice how the features at that time put the working man always in a fedora, while the aristocrat power wears another type of hat and more formal attire.
Fedora’s flexible features allow for various shapes, crowns, colors, borders, materials, and details. Due to the nearly endless variations, ads rarely call the hat a “fedora.”
It is more common to see some unique name created by the hat maker. An excellent example of this is that in 1940, over 2 million men purchased a Stetson “Playboy” hat, which is a fedora. Even the Panama hat itself has very similar characteristics, and its only difference is that straw is used for making this hat.
Starting in the 1920s, the fedora hat became a fashion icon for thugs like Al Capone and “tough” Hollywood characters like Humphrey Bogart. Only the upper class and aristocratic men maintained loyalty to the old system of a different hat for each occasion for the commoner; the fedora was a jack of all trades worn on formal and informal occasions.
The style’s popularity peaked in the 1940s and began to wane in the 1950s and 1960s. The hat industry suffered a fatal blow from which it would never recover when JFK, the newly elected president of the United States, took his hatless oath on its head. Short-brimmed fedora and trilbys (a hat with a very short brim) were the last breath before the hat gave way to the long hair of the 70s.
Conclusion
If you’re in the process of exploring and developing a more expressive personal style, a good men’s hat can look great. A lifetime product can cost a few hundred dollars, so it’s better to start small to get used to it and find that hat that defines you.