JFK no hatless Jack

[BanjoMerlin]

Since I'm new here I should get a freebie even on an old subject. So here goes.

JFK seldom wore hats but LBJ often wore a hat so he should have negated the JFK effect, if there was one.

Hats didn't go out of style. PEOPLE went out of style.

Men stopped wearing suits everywhere they went. Men stopped wearing a necktie at home. Women stopped wearing a dress while they did housework. Teens refused to do anything the "establishment" did. Hats were replaced by Caps.

I've always worn a hat. When everyone in school was growing their hair long, mine was falling out. If you've never had the top of your head sunburnt you cannot really appreciate the value of a good hat.

 

[scotrace]

Hat wearing did indeed begin to decline prior to WWI (1913), and the whole trend was begun by women.
The slide started then, and the curve went downward for the rest of the century.
Read the book.

 

[jwalls]

No, JFK did not kill hat wearing, but my grandfather ( a lifelong Democrat, hat man and cigar smoker) after the Cuban embargo never called the President anything but "that SOB in The White House" :eusa_doh: :eusa_doh:

 

[BanjoMerlin]

It's all the Beatles fault!

I never consider ONE book to be anything but one author's opinion. There are so many books covering fashion in the 20th century. Some claim this and some claim that. I prefer unposed historical photographs and newreels when they are available and compare that with period advertisements.

The value of advertisements is they tell us what the people who were selling products perceived their market to be. Ads for Stetson's dress hats from the 1920s all the way through the 1950s were clearly targeted at the middle and upper-middle class - most often those who were college educated businessmen. Even those depicted in a "casual" setting were quite well dressed with coat, tie and hat.

Women's fashions from the 1920s through the 1950s were not nearly as consistent. From the revolutionary styles of the flapper era, through the more conservative styles forced by the Depression and then WWII, into the New Look of the late 1940s and 1950s, women's fashions varied greatly. But all during this time men were wearing the basic coat, tie and hat with only small variations in style.

Then the 1960s came and things changed drastically. A young President with a very stylish wife only started the changes. JFK seldom wore a hat but Jackie often did so. But their impact on the dress code of American didn't last. Middle and upper-middle class college students began to rebel as they had never done before. They listened to Rock and Roll music. They threw off the trappings of their class. They became hippies! "Style" took on a whole new meaning as the new generation struggled to create their own non-style.

We have yet to recover from that.

I blame it all on the Beatles.

 

[elvisroe]

I think the car and the office killed the hat.

We're often so rarely exposed to the elements that there's just no real practical need to wear a hat. As a piece of stand-by head equipment for those rare moments in the weather, a cap is a more portable choice.

Even as a hat-fan I never wear one to work as I travel from my carport to an underground carpark and back again 8 hours later without once ever having to set foot outside.[huh]

 

[Tomasso]

I blame it all on the Beatles.

 

[Tiller]

They may have a few publicity shots, but it was them and other "youth icons" of the late 60's early 70's who really killed the hat for a generation. When the hat became a symbol of the establishment the younger gents stopped (or never started) wearing them, and largely the middle aged generations stopped, and started wearing turtle necks under their suits (as old episodes of tv shows such as later seasons of Bewitched like to remind us :eusa_doh.

After that you may find some hippies wearing straw cowboy hats and the like, but the age of suit and hat was largely dead for that generation and beyond.

Now were they the sole cause? No, of course not, but they did play a large role. I'd blame the late 60's and 70's for the extreme slip towards the casual society we have today, where you will see some people at the local 7-11 wearing PJ bottoms, a sweatshirt, and flip flops to the store, combined with the ever attractive bed hair, and usually carrying their wallet in their hand. The real great thing about it is compared to the pj bottom sweatshirt crowd, we who wear suits are the real freaks in the current fashion world.

 

[Topper]

Presidents and Hats

Humm nice thread.....

Kennedy did wear a Top Hat at his inauguration, though not all the time, he was not very hat friendly despite much coaxing by the industry......


On the topic of Presidents and Hats, here is another teaser to discuss:

"President Lincoln never wore a stovepipe - True or False? "

 

[danofarlington]

Humm nice thread.....

Kennedy did wear a Top Hat at his inauguration, though not all the time, he was not very hat friendly despite much coaxing by the industry......


On the topic of Presidents and Hats, here is another teaser to discuss:

"President Lincoln never wore a stovepipe - True or False? "

I think one reason Kennedy didn't wear a hat was because of his hair. That was a major part of his appearance and image, and helped to make him a heartthrob to the ladies of the day. Hair also was the big reason IMHO that hats took a nosedive in the 1960s and 70s--no young man wanted to cover his hair, at least where long hair was worn. Your hair style was you. I lived this. Men of the older generation at that time wore hats, and it struck us as hopelessly passe. Our attitude toward styles of the earlier generation spawned slogans such as "this is not your father's Oldsmobile." I also think that Jimmy Carter's hair was responsible for his election in no small part. He was widely viewed at the time to have "perfect hair" (sort of like Jimmy Johnson). You never would've seen Carter in a hat either.

 

[Tomasso]

They may have a few publicity shots, but it was them and other "youth icons" of the late 60's early 70's who really killed the hat for a generation.

The pic was in jest. That said, while the rockers of that era did in fact eschew the fedora, they did wear other types of lids IRL.

 

[Ande1964]

Cav!

That is a Cavanagh. One of the nicer production hats of the era.

Anj

 

[Andykev]

Kennedy had a big head.

Chester A. Arthur . . . . . . . .7 1/4 U. S. Grant . . . . . . . . . . .7 3/8 William McKinley . . . . . 7 1/8
Fred Astaire . . . . . . . . . . . .7 1/8 Warren G. Harding . . . . . . .7 3/8 Richard M. Nixon . . . . . . . . 7 1/2
Enrico Caruso . . . . . . . . . .7 1/4 Benjamin Harrison . . . . . . 7 1/2 Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . . 7 3/8
Winston Churchill . . . . . . .7 1/8 Rutherford B. Hayes . . . . 7 1/16 Theodore Roosevelt . . . . . 7 3/8
Grover Cleveland . . . . . . . 7 1/2 J. Edgar Hoover . . . . . . . 7 1/2
Babe Ruth . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1/2
Calvin Coolidge . . . . . . . . 7 1/8 Herbert Hoover . . . . . . . .7 3/8 William H. Taft . . . . . . . .7 3/4
Thomas E. Dewey . . . . . .7 3/8 Andrew Johnson . . . . . . . 7 1/4
Harry S. Truman . . . . . . . 7 3/8
D. Eisenhower . . . . . . . 7 1/4 Lyndon B. Johnson .. . . . .7 3/8 Jimmy Walker . . . . . . . . 7 1/16
Jas. A. Farley . . . . . .. . .7 1/4 John F. Kennedy . . .. . . . .7 5/8 Woodrow Wilson . . . . . . 7 1/4
Henry Ford . . . . . .. . . . .6 7/8 LaGuardia, F. H . . . . . . . .7 1/4
Duke of Windsor . .. . . . .6 3/4
James A. Garfield . . .. . 7 3/4 Abraham Lincoln . . . . . . . 7 1/8

 

[tonyb]

I don't know that it's the same hat in all the photos you posted FF112390, but I'm with Ande on the one whose interior we can see. It sure does look like a Cavanagh liner. And Cavanagh used that type of sweatband bow as well.

Yes, as Ande said, it was among the higher-end production hats of its era. Having said that, though, I can't say I'm much taken with the style. The crown tapers a bit too much for my tastes, and the brim is a tad short. I ain't fond of the relatively short trouser length, either. But, you know, it went along with the narrow lapels and flat fronted pants that were fashionable in that era. There are better and lesser examples of those styles, for sure. Kennedy was a good-lookin' guy in trim condition, so he looked pretty darned sharp. Those styles generally weren't so flattering to the rounder gents.

 

[Adcurium]

Crazy. I dance like Fred Astair AND I wear the same size hat.

 

[RobFedoraField]

chocolate Cav

I have a chocolate Cav that looks almost identical to that, and it's my favorite short brim hat!

 

[FedoraFan112390]

Ironic...

Isn't it ironic that JFK is person/thing most commonly blamed for the 'demise' of the Fedora in general, and yet he was likely the last President to wear a Fedora while in office, and the last President to wear a Topper to his inauguration? I mean a whole book was written about his supposed distaste for hats, and nearly every article about hats always mentions that JFK ''killed'' them, yet a number of pictures abound of him either wearing or carrying a Fedora while in office, and I've heard there are even more of him wearing a fedora while he was just a Senator.

It's ironic also that JFK, in popular memory, is supposed to have represented the "new freedom" of the 1960s in terms of fashion, yet the man dressed very traditional--at times a hat, wore a suit, etc. In popular memory, he's thought of as almost being a proto-Hippie; this open, "hip guy."

Even more ironic is that the President who seemed to represent the opposite of the Hippie 1960s--LBJ--embraced the subculture much moreso than JFK ever did. The Beatnik subculture was alive and known when JFK was in office; He never embraced it. Yet LBJ himself was a beatnik in his youth during the 1920s, and when he left office, grew his hair and sideburns long much like the Hippies who so despised him.

(IMO, there are two ''1960s'' culturally. There is 1960-1965, which is in my opinion a continuation of the '50s and the last gasps of the Golden Era. This is the era of James Bond, of women wearing gloves and pillbox hats, of Doo Wop and Motown, when class and refinement and formality still had a place; and then there is 1965-1974, the Rock era, the Hippie era, the Woodstock era: The period beginning with the real start of Vietnam to the end of Watergate all being part of the same cultural era. It almost seems like a very sudden change really--1960 and 1967 were VERY different).

 

[The Good]

Yes, it is pretty ironic. President Kennedy seems to have developed a false reputation surrounding his supposed "hatlessness" during his inauguration speech. While it's true that he was mostly bare-headed there (and most of the time), he did have a hat at hand often.

The 1960s was definitely one of the most interesting decades of the 20th century. I actually like the pop-culture and the styles from the era, too, but not so much the hippie element. I do really like the early James Bond or Mad Men look though. In fact, my next hat might very well be in the style of a stingy brim trilby (thinking of going with a Christy's Sportsman). I wear a narrow-lapel sport coat, so I may as well have a narrow brim hat to compliment it.

 

[FedoraFan112390]

Bumping this oldie. I've discovered quite a collection over time of Jack wearing hats not only throughout his Presidency, but in his earlier career:

1946:

January 21st, 1960: On his way to formally announce his bid for the Presidency:

December 2nd 1960 (on the way to visit Jackie in the hospital at Georgetown):

ca. 1961-1963 at Boston Logan Airport:

February 26th, 1961 - Leaving the White House:

March 26th, 1961 - at Palm Beach Airport after a conference with British Prime Minister MacMillian:

April 1st, 1961, greeting Averill Harriman:

April 10th, 1961 - Baseball, Opening Day '61:

At Camp David, April 22nd, 1961:

Greeting President Sukarno, April 24th 1961:

En route to the airport, May 11th 1961:

In car with Charles DeGaulle, May 31st, 1961 (trip lasted from May 18th - June 1st 1961):

At Vienna, June 3rd, 1961:

December 19th, 1961:

Greeting Arturo Frondizi, December 24th, 1961:

1962:

October 20th, 1962 (during Cuban Missile Crisis):

JFK and Jackie attend a White House ceremony, February 21st 1963:

At Logan Airport, April 20th, 1963:

In the White House, September 10th, 1963:

 

[Frunobulax]

Very cool shots.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Alexander Sommerset]

Nixon wore a fedora in office, too. Reagan wore cowboy hats. According to threads right here, the hat industry was noticing the decline in sales starting the the 1930s. My guess is that it started when men started worrying more about their hairstyles.