A reporter from the Wall Street Journal — a respected newspaper — phoned me last week. I am, as you might know, an amateur historian of men’s hats, having written a slim book on the subject five years ago. The reporter was writing an article on hats.
“Whatever you do, just don’t say hats are back,” I said, explaining that while the fashion might enjoy brief upticks of popularity, such as now, apparently, hats are not back and are never coming back, not in the sense they once were, as obligatory fashion accessories worn by nearly everybody.
Once, wearing a hat was a duty for a man. Men had to wear hats, and those who didn’t were considered oddballs. Though that world is gone, gone, gone, for some reason every year some editor at some newspaper spies a young man in a pork pie hat and decides that hats have magically returned.
I carefully explained this to the guy from the Journal, warning him against the media’s perennial mistaken cheerleading of the hat industry
Five years ago, the New York Times turned its attention to men’s hats and found them enjoying “an unforeseen resurgence” in popularity.
“Hats are back,” the Fresno Bee crowed in 2003, “Hats are once again cool,” the Tulsa World revealed in 2002. In 2001, the Chattanooga Times Free Press announced, “hats are back.” In 2000, the Chicago Tribune noted, “the hat is making a comeback.”
“Hats,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune observed in 1999, “are back.” And on and on.
A few days passed, and the Wall Street Journal printed the story.
Opening sentence?
“After decades in dormancy, brimmed hats are back on the streets.”
Which is heartbreaking, first, as I said, because hats are not back and never will be. And second, “brimmed hats”? A brim is what makes a head covering a hat — without a brim, it isn’t a hat, but a cap or a beanie or such. So not only are hats not back, but we no longer even know what they were or what to call them.
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