My buddy Dave texted me last night. No hello, no where you been, just “when did guys stop wearing hats”. Not fedoras, hats. No specific style or brand, just hats. We were both already in bed by the time I got it at 11pm on a Tuesday and I sat there blinking at my phone for a full minute because I didn’t have a straight answer. If you know me you know I have an answer for literally everything guys wear whether you asked me or not. I had nothing for this question. I spent the next two hours making my way back through everything we wear instead of sleeping, which tbh is probably a normal Tuesday night for me.
Everyone has an opinion on why men stopped wearing hats and honestly, most of you are wrong in the same lazy way. People love blaming JFK but opting to go hatless for his inauguration and I understand why that myth persists. It’s clean, there’s a bad guy to point fingers at, you can explain it all in a tweet. But JFK isn’t why men stopped wearing hats. Sales were down for years before that and are you really gonna fault a style shift on one dude? Better answer is cars, honestly. Low roofed cars leave little room for a hat, especially if you want to see or do the things cars are made to help you do. Once guys were driving everywhere rather than walking or taking the train a hat just became one more thing to hold on your lap, lose, or forget on the seat. Blaming JFK feels better than cars chewing up your style icons but truth hurts man.
The real reason men stopped wearing hats has nothing to do with fashion at all.
It’s weather. Indoorsy weather. Central heated married damn buildings and cars made hats pointless. A good hat was part of your daily uniform because you needed it to keep warm walking to work in January. Throw on a hat made of wool and walk five blocks to the train? No problem. Walk five blocks in the snow without a hat and you’d look like Chaplin. Hell, throw on a hat for your five block walk to the car these days and you’ll look stupid. Hell, jackets got smaller because we don’t need the layers to keep warm inside our overheated society. Hell grew hats when we started staying indoors more and not using them as part of our daily uniform.
I think part of what sucks about the whole “men stopped wearing hats” thing is that we act like it was some kind of style decision. Like men everywhere woke up and decided hats weren’t cool anymore. Hats didn’t become optional and once they became optional people stopped rocking them. It’s not a stylistic choice when you no longer need something to be a part of your wardrobe. Throw a hat on with your Air Maxes and tank top and yeah you’ll look dumb, because you wouldn’t have needed a hat with that outfit tenements ago either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suddenly the hat whisperer that’s going to solve everyones headwear problems. I don’t wear them either 99% of the time, cap mostly because cars and no fucking winter coat. I’m just sick of hearing about how hats dont look good. They fucking do, when you know how to wear one. Problem is, nobody really does anymore. Know how to size a hat?can you tilt it just so? Fuck, how to actually fit a hat to your head instead of letting it slide around on top like a freaking bowl?
Right now hats fall into that “mysterious piece you only see on old timers” category most styles go through before they make it back big. But here’s the thing… they are coming back, I just don’t think they’ll look like they did when they left.
Hats will be back dudes, just not on your head every Tuesday on the train like they used to be. We’re not gonna magically start needing them to stay warm walking to work again, and honestly I hope we don’t ever have to deal with THAT level of hat regression. What I think we will see are dudes rocking them as a style statement again the way they did in the days before every Tom,Tim and Harry owned one. Think more mustard field jackets and less sad trombone newsboy caps.
Believe me when I say I see it happening. Love scrolling resale apps at three in the morning as much as the next guy and I see vintage wool hats sniped faster than I can click refresh more nights than I care to admit. Solid green wool newsboys, brand name stro versogs that don’t make hats anymore…I lost a gorgeous gray dgx felt last spring to a sniperswitch. Refreshed the post twice while scrolling thinking “nah nobody else would have seen this in ten minutes” and some dude took it while I was thirty seconds from hitting my own stupid max offer. Resale markets DON’T move like that over dead styles folks.
We’re getting hats back but in a splinter group kind of way. Small batch runs of modern styles mixed with actual vintage because there are literally hats being bought faster than stores can restock the good brands on Depop than there were five years ago. Guys will wear them because they want to, not because they HAVE to for warmth and those guys are going to know how to wear one correctly. Proper sizing, tilts, actually fitting them to your head for cryin’ out loud. It wont be everyone rocking one and that’s ok.
It’ll take another handful of years till enough guys wear them that seeing someone with a real hat won’t make you thinkhipster-but-not- hipster-enough guy threw it on for maximum blogenes yesterday. But they will come back. Trust me.
….probably.
Ryan is a Nottingham resale obsessive who hunts secondhand trainers and streetwear, and can tell you which app, which search term and roughly which hour a good listing drops. He also knows how to check a pair is genuine.
