…and why we need to start wearing them again

I’m ancient, so I remember when all men wore hats. Not ballcaps. Proper hats. Everyone. Even the man who lived under the bridge wore an old beat-up fedora.

John F. Kennedy tossed hats away for good in the early 1960s, and no one really looked back.

But it’s time.

Everyone on the planet wears a ballcap, and the hoity toity ladies wear “fascinators” to Ascot and the Derby. But aside from the trilby that hipsters don, and the everydayworkingmans cowboy hat…..it’s ballcaps all the way.

Ladies were expected to wear hats. It was an emblem. It showed self-respect and respect for whatever the endeavor was. You always wore a hat to church.

The no more hats thing may have more to do with the laissez faire attitutude towards everything right now, but I think we’d all feel better with a good hat. The kind that when you put it on, you really feel like you. It adds something you can’t really describe.

And if you wear a hat a lot, people recognize you.

Our pastor wears cowboy hats. We’re not in Texas or Oklahoma. We’re in the Lowcountry. But everyone recognizes him because of that hat. Which is the way he wants it.

I’ve always worn hats, so I get it. There’s statement hats, and there’s dress-up hats, for church and teas (told you, I’m old). Admittedly, a lot of ballcaps. But cowboy hats, dozens over the years. A few very nice fedoras, which is my favorite shape. What I call a Hemingway hat, which is between a cowboy and a fedora. Panama hats for the Lowcountry heat, including the wide brimmed planters hats. And then the hat you plunk on your head because your hair’s a sight.

Before we could shop online, I looked high and low for a couple huge hats – for a wedding, and a garden party. And a hat with a serious veil, for a rather strange funeral.

Whatever the reason, I want to see hats again. They’re fun. They show you meant to dress up. Or dress down. Or “wave and say hey!”

Putting on a hat lets people know you care how you look. Because we seem to have lost a lot of that, too, in the last few decades….a subject for another day…

…but if we care how we look, we take care of other things. Wearing pajamas to Walmart is another statement altogether.

Let’s just start with hats.

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FULL DISCLOSURE:

I’ve been redecorating vintage hats and painting on some new ones, so I do have a dog in this hunt. You can see my fancied-up-hats-to-wear-every-day at The Lowcountry Living Room in Yemassee SC. And on this website.

But every endeavor should involve service, not just commerce, so I also want to “polish crowns.” If you know a lady who says she can’t go to church because she doesn’t “have a good enough hat,” steer her my way. She can send me that favorite church hat that’s a little puny, and I’ll “polish” it up.