What Started It All

[Gilbey]

In this age of hatless society, what made you want to wear a fedora in the first place? Was it just by watching old movies? What started it all? For me, it was really when I bought this album a long time ago. I said, "What a debonair look! Now where can I get a hat like that?" I went to my local mall thinking it would be where they sold suit and ties, but no luck. :eusa_doh: I had to go to Ebay.

 

[Zig2k143]

I must say I don't remember. I do remember enjoying wearing fedora's when I was in highschool and college... I didn't wear many and not all the time, butI always had one in Black or Grey.

I have always also had a interest in vintage things, movies, musicals, watches, ect...

Fast forward to last year when I was at a truck stop. I saw this cheap black fedora and decided to buy it.

Enjoying how it looked on me I started to search the net for more and thus found FL.

I know own 6 hats and that is probably just the start.

 

[johnnycanuck]

Spending as much time outside as I did as a child, and burning easily, wearing a hat was not to much of a stretch. I wanted an Indiana Jones hat but all I could find locally was a Tilley. So that was me for years till I found a cheep blues brothers style in a high end men's shop. But the brim was to short for any real outdoor activity. It wasn't until I went on a scouting trip down to Mexico and saw the Portugal scouts with there felt scout hats that I started really looking for proper hats. Now I have many hats in all styles in my collection.

Hatless society..... more like cancer society. I still don't get why hats are not more mainstream then they are. Heterosexuals accessorizing up the ying yang I figured hats would be an extra fun fashion addition. Then again main stream Celebes like Justin Timberlake, Johnny Depp, are getting more and more into them. More people buy them, they will become readily available, quality will go up, and more options will start emerging.

My two cents.

Johnny

 

[Gilbey]

Hatless society..... more like cancer society. I still don't get why hats are not more mainstream then they are. Heterosexuals accessorizing up the ying yang I figured hats would be an extra fun fashion addition. Then again main stream Celebes like Justin Timberlake, Johnny Depp, are getting more and more into them. More people buy them, they will become readily available, quality will go up, and more options will start emerging.

My two cents.

Johnny

Yeah I agree. But what killed them in the first place? Did it just suddenly die out in the 60's when the Beatles popularized their long hair?

 

[Twitch]

In about 1971 me and another guy tried to wear fedoras occassionally mostly cause we just thought they were cool. He had a 1937 Plymouth and I had a 1951 Ford at the time though too so interest in "old stuff" was in cars as well. It never caught on back then for 20-something guys to make inroads in fedora wearing and we quit.

I partly got back into the concept due to the fact that I purchased a 1950 vintage car about 3 years ago.

 

[Flieger]

For me it was back in the mid-80's... when everyone else where wearing pastell-colored jackets with rolled up sleeves and short suit jackets, me and my buddy raided our grand-/parents clothes in storage and found cool jackets, shirts and coats from 1940-60's. We added cheep wool fedoras and felt soooo much cooler then the other guys. The 80's is long gone but the positive feeling of having a fedora om my head never left.

Sinatra and Indiana Jones also had some influence but not until later.

Flieger

 

[Fatdutchman]

When I first got interested in wearing hats, there was no Ebay!

1981, I was 10 years old. Indiana Jones. :fedora: enough said.

I never wore a hat during high school....didn't really have the opportunity. Couldn't really wear a hat to school, and couldn't wear one while working at the grocery store, and I basically didn't go anywhere else so...

I got my first real hat (which I still have, though heavily reworked) in about 1989, my senior year. Local Western store. I wore it some, but not much, as it wasn't precisely what I wanted, and I couldn't really find what I did want (only now, am I really finding the kinds of hats I want!), so not much real hat wearing until recently for me, though I have been interested in them for years.

 

[akaBruno]

For me it was finding my Daddy's old Stetson Open Road.

 

[Jefferson Smith]

Yeah I agree. But what killed them in the first place? Did it just suddenly die out in the 60's when the Beatles popularized their long hair?

I've heard JFK's fashion influence was a factor, as well as automobiles.

 

[warbird]

I've heard JFK's fashion influence was a factor, as well as automobiles.

JFK always mentioned in this discussion and his credit or blame is highly overrated. It took years for the decline of hats and many men wore them well into the 60's. Finally the adulthood of hippies did hat in, but they is still too simplistic probably.

 

[warbird]

I started wearing hats over 20 years ago. They were all handed down to me by my grandfather and uncles. I came from a large older family and all the men wore hats. I admired these men and wanted to be like them. Unfortunately most of those hats are too small, some i could stretch, some not. hey are also at 2" just too short a brim to look good on me. Some I would get rid of and some not.

I have worn hats consistently since that time. I like fedoras, the traditional Akubra styles, some cowboy styles and what I call British driving caps. And I have plenty of ball caps as well. I have a need to keep from getting sunburned on the face plus I shaved my head for I guess 7 or 8 years, so I almost never went out in hats that didn't have a brim all around.

I wouldn't know what to do without my hats. Hats are as necessary for me as sunglasses when I go out.

 

[ScionPI2005]

For me, it was watching old movies and playing detective computer games growing up (mainly the Tex Murphy PI series). Around my sophomore year of college, I realized I thought it would be cool to have a fedora. I bought this really cheap Indiana Jones wool one off of ebay.

I wore it for about a year, then decided to go up in quality a bit. I ended up buying a Biltmore grey fur felt one off of and internet store. Sadly, I ordered a size slightly too big for me; though I still wore it for about two years.

I got a Stetson more in my size about two years ago, and it is my main fall/winter/early spring hat.

So all in all, I've been obsessed with fedoras for about five or six years.

 

[Fatdutchman]

Eh, the decline in hat wearing started in the '50's...actually, some say it started in the 40's, when men's fashion started to focus on the hairstyle more so than the hat.

I was watching "Magnum Force" the other day (1973), and I found it interesting that many of the men just walking down the street were still wearing hats.

 

[Undertow]

I've always owned and worn a ton of hats, varying from huge Russian rabbit-fur hats down to the old fez. However, a love for the 30's and 40's brought me to try fedoras and everything ballooned from there.

What particular event or image brought me up to speed? I regularly attend performances at my city's art center and I've always worn a suit. At one time, I only had one good suit so I went out looking for other suits. When I aquired enough suits and seperates, I began wearing them regularly. The thought of wearing a suit everyday in our casual society reawakened my love for the Golden Era and hats followed naturally.

But to give credit where credit is due, the Fedora Lounge quickly became a great source of suit information for me before I even owned a single fedora. I lurked for quite a while.

 

[Anders]

You've been struck by...

The need for a hat first struck me while watching the video to Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal, though it was watching some old Bogart films that finally made me track one down.

Now if only the hats let me dance like that....

 

[Fridaynight]

Oh boy, a good question.

I don't think I've ever seen any of my family members wearing hats (besides ballcaps), and movies/movie stars had no bearing on my initial interest. I was just looking to change my wardrobe from 'all casual, all the time' to something a little higher class. Pulled my slacks and nice shirts out from where they had been hidden in the closet and bought a money clip and a nice watch. At some point I went online and saw something about hats (can't even remember what it was exactly).
Eventually I found myself here, lurked for a couple weeks, and every day I wanted a hat more and more until finally I went and bought one at Burlington Coat Factory, then went on Ebay and bought a second one.

At least that's how I think it happened, for some reason I'm having trouble remembering events from 2-3 months ago.

 

[metropd]

[/QUOTE]

SEE Senator Jack see Senator Jack!!!!
Frank Sinatra is in a wide brim . Just joking Jack, you look good in what ever hat you put on, even if its less than wide. I won't lie though I swear I saw a thread awhile back, I think it was you attending a fedora lounge event with my main cat Matt Deckard and you looking like a self appointed satorial Monarch in a 2 5/8 or 2 3/4 brim... and man did you look Great. It was like a prophecy painted of Napoleon taking the crown of a monarch from the powers of the Vatican and reinstating yourself as the almighty ruler of wide brims. It was almost as powerful as my pointless analogies.

 

[metropd]

See this is what happens when I stay up to 2:46 am with nothing to do.

 

[LeeB]

For myself, being an avid outdoorsman, I've always worn some type of brimmed hat. Finding that ball caps did a rather poor job of protecting your head frfom anything, I turned to full brimmed hats. The extreme brims of western hats proved too expansive for things like hiking and hunting, but the more moderate brim of fedora style hats was perfect. I have been wearing these types of hats for close to twenty years now.
I, too, find it odd that more people don't wear brimmed hats. At a recent event at my children's school, many parent volunteers spent the (very sunny) day outdoors supervising games and such. I recieved more then one comment about me being the "smart one" who wore a hat. Puzzling......

The decline of (especially) men wearing hats started in the decades immediately following WW2. After so many men being in uniform for so long, the standard civilian "uniform" of suit and hat was increasingly seen as restrictive. The fall really gained steam with the long haired styles tht men adopted in the late 60's onward.

 

[dr greg]

The Sun

I grew up in a place with the worst skin cancer rates in the western world, so a hat was mandatory for anyone who wasn't a macho fool, and plenty of them are in the boneyard now, but stylistically....Robert Mitchum in Farewell My Lovely....nuff said. I think I was about 19 when it came out....never set foot outside without one ever since.
(which doesn't mean I missed out on the classics, but this was in COLOUR!!)