00:00 So, in 1925, approximately 35 million hats were produced in the United States. Per the US population at that time period, that comes out to approximately one hat per man per year. The popular hats at the time were the fedora, the homber.
00:13 the bowler, the newsboy, the straw boater, and the Panama. Gents, it's safe to say if you were to go outside during that time period, you would not see a man out walking around without a hat. In fact, Joe Rogan and Theo von were just talking about this over on their podcast about how hats were everywhere.
It didn't matter if you're rich, poor, dressing down, dressing up, when you walked out of your house, you had a hat on. Fast forward 50 years to the 1970s, the total US population has more than doubled. But, the number of hats being sold in this country, 00:42 well under 2 million.
Walking around during this decade, you're lucky to see one in a hundred men wearing a hat. So, what happened in the span of less than half a century? Why did men abandon their trilbis and fedoras?
Were hats a fashion trend that just fell out of style or were hats a casualty of a cultural shift? Well, gentlemen, the answer to these questions is actually in this picture right here. Do you see it?
Well, don't worry, gents. If it's not obvious, it will be by the end of this video as we dive into solving the mystery of why did men stop wearing hats. 01:11 Now, to understand the decline of hats, we first have to understand the rise.
Why did men start wearing hats to begin with? Now, for thousands of years, men and women have used hats both to protect themselves and as a sign of social status. But, starting in the 1700s for men, this became uniform across Europe and the United States in the form of the bicorne and the tricorne hat.
Favored by the military, favored by wealthy men and men that worked outdoors, the bicorne and the tricorne hat was relatively easy to produce and very expensive. 01:40 functional piece of headwear that protected the wearer's head from the elements and kept them warm. And this needs to be emphasized because in the modern world today, we don't spend much time outdoors.
But, go back just a hundred years, the majority of men worked outdoors. And if you traveled during the day like most people did, you were going to be exposed to the sun for sometimes hours at a time. So, protecting the head was important.
Now, tricorn and bicornhats were made from a variety of different materials and a man was able to show office status. 02:07 by the material the hat was made of and occasionally decorative accessories and details sewn and built into the headwear. By the 1800s, the bi and the tricorn hats are out and we see the rise of the top hat.
Which, by the way, this hat is still worn at certain occasions in various parts of the world. But, the top hat by its very design is more of a sign of status than it is a practical day-to-day piece of headwear. The rise of the top hat also marked a big shift in population densities going from rural areas to.
. . 02:35 the cities.
Basically, during the 18th century, the industrialization age, we see people migrating from farms to the cities for factory work. Those that were fortunate or maybe cunning, devious, however you want to describe it, enough to make it to the top, wanting to be able to show off that wealth and that status in the way they dressed in the top hat became very popular especially in larger cities like New York, London, Chicago, and Paris. And, the bowler, by the way, emerged in this time period as a more practical day-to-day 03:02 By the 1880s and 1890s as more and more men started to earn more money than they had ever earned, and because of still the practical need of headwear and its social status, in the year 1900, we saw the peak of hat sales at over 42 million in a single year.
Just give me an idea of that number, that was more than the male adult population. So, with 1. 4 hats being sold for every man, we saw a number of different styles start to emerge like the fedora, the Homburg, the Newsboy, and the flat cap.
So, by the 1920s, it's safe to say we have reached peak. 03:31 hat. The average man has anywhere from three to five hats in his wardrobe and no self-respecting guy would ever leave his home without one on his head.
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So, go check it out, take advantage of this deal, guys. It's a great one. So, what happened to the hat?
Why did men stop wearing it? Why did sales plummet? Now, based off my research, I've got five reasons right here.
Let's go through and break them out. 05:21 this first reason was a shift in demographics, specifically where we are spending our time. The reality is from 1870 to 1970, the amount of men spending time outside, it completely flipped in terms of percentages.
In 1870, a man would spend 10 to 14 hours outdoors. In 1970, he was spending on average less than an hour. The big shift here was from rural farm work to men moving to the cities having factory jobs, having service jobs, and the rise of the white-collar industry.
05:49 As men spent more and more time indoors, they realized and they stopped buying the headwear that would protect them when they were outside in the elements. Now, understand this was a gradual process. Men are creatures of habit.
If you had been wearing a hat for the first 20 to 30 years of your adult life, most likely you continued that habit, you just had less opportunities to wear it. But, it's that new generation we need to pay attention to especially the baby booters. We had a huge surge in new births from 1945.
06:16 to the 1950s. All of these new young men entering the workforce in the late 1960s and 70s? For them, there was no habit attachment to wearing a hat and they were quick to abandon it.
And that takes us right into the youth culture, rebellion, the changing of fashion. It's safe to say in the 1960s, we saw a cultural revolution. From the rise of Elvis Presley to the rise of the Beatles, from the mods to the hippies to the counterculture rebellion, post-war generations did not want to associate themselves with their parents, they wanted something different.
06:46 one of the biggest ways to be able to separate yourself from your father was to stop looking like your father. Tons of young men started to reject the conservative dress code. They wanted to dress in a manner that they felt was more suited to them, but not even realizing it, they were falling into the 1960s and 1970s fashion trends.
On top of that, let's talk about cultural icons. So, JFK was noted, yes, he occasionally wore a hat, but JFK pretty much did not wear a hat in most appearances to include his inauguration 07:15 chilly day in DC, but the guy still he just wore his jacket up there, did not wear a hat. And this moment captured on television seen by tons of young idealistic men was basically a nail in the coffin of headwear.
And, again, JFK wasn't the only cultural icon as Hollywood became more popular especially with the younger crowds. We see guys like Marlon Brando, James Dean, and other silver screen heroes looking stylish, looking cool all without anything on their heads. Now, for this next point, let's go back to that picture I showed you earlier.
I said it would become. . .
07:44 obvious. One of the cultural shifts, one of the habits that is seen as a culprit when it comes to the demise of the hat. Do you see it now?
Gentlemen, it's the rise of the automobile. So, funny enough, when cars were first manufactured, they didn't have roofs and there wasn't an issue to be able to wear your top hat right there in the car. But, as cars became more popular in the 1920s, 1930s, all of a sudden we started to see roofs and manufacturers realized it didn't make a lot of sense for us to make raised roofs to accommodate those hats.
08:11 let's just lower the roofs, an encouragement to take the hats off. Now, of course, a lot of guys that are wearing flat caps or newsboys, they can't wear hats 08:17 get away with wearing their hat in the car. But, for most guys, especially if you're a little bit bigger, a little bit taller, you're going to have to take off that Homburg, that Trilby, or that Fedora when you get into your car.
And, as Americans and the world started to spend a lot more time in their vehicles, they realized the function of the hat protecting from the elements all of a sudden became unnecessary. By the early 1950s, every respectable American family wanted to own at least one automobile. And, as this became their primary mode of transportation, they spent a lot more time in it not wearing their hat.
08:45 Another interesting point about the rise of the automobile is that became a bigger class signifier than the wearing of a hat. Now, hats by and of themselves were never a true indicator of status. It also went with your clothing and the way you presented yourself.
But, in the last hundred years as we have moved towards a more casual society, we've seen that people using class and status indicators through clothing has actually dropped off. Although interesting, it still has a big effect on people. 09:10 Hence, I always encourage you guys to dress in a manner that you're sending the message you want to without saying a word by wearing the appropriate clothing.
Now, this point improved comfort technology gets overlooked a lot, but it really was the death toll of the hat. Now, depending on what study you read, you lose like 10 to 25% of the heat from your body through your head. In any case, I know when I'm walking outside if I don't have a hat on, I just feel a lot colder.
And that was the thing, wearing a hat was practical especially when most men. 09:37 we're walking around or you're traveling maybe in a train that's unheated working in an office that is relatively cool. But, with the advent of better heating systems not only in public transportation and in offices, but also in private automobiles, the amount of time a man spent actually in the elements exposed to extreme cold fell dramatically and all of a sudden the practicality of wearing headwear day to day disappeared.
All right, gents. So, at this point, you're probably thinking, okay, that makes a lot of sense with hats, but what happened to the cape? 10:06 I mean, come on, that was an amazing accessory.
Guys, I got it covered. Why did men stop wearing capes? Seriously, we actually had capes in the United States Marine Corps which was freaking awesome, but why day to day did men stop wearing them?
Guys, I got you covered with that video right here. Seriously, it's a fun video. Go check it out.
Boom, right there.
