Why Men Stopped Wearing Hats

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.