Reported on September 20, 1925 New York times: “The Straw Hats History Ignored by President Coolidge”
The title may come as a surprise. Why is there a date that straw hats can no longer be worn? And why does a headline in the country’s largest newspaper deserve that US President Calvin Coolidge ignore this appointment? To illustrate this, we need to take a closer look at the history of hat fashion.
Explode someone’s hat
The headgear was originally worn to fulfill probably the most obvious function: protecting the head, hair, and scalp from wind and weather. But even in ancient Egypt or Rome, the headdress also had a symbolic meaning – it conveys the status of a person. The importance of hats in our society can be seen in various sayings: we take off our hats, put on our hats, throw our hats into the ring or sometimes our hats rise.
Since the Middle Ages, the hat has become important as a status symbol in European societies. Soon there was a special kind of headgear for nearly every shift and every job. From the seventeenth century it developed into an important fashion attribute. There were men’s and women’s hats, some of strange shapes, ornaments, and sizes. In Europe, the top hat became the standard crowning of the head, and in the United States it was the Stetson hat, named after its manufacturer and perhaps the most famous cowboy hat. Hat makers mostly use felt as a material, but also fur or leather. But one material that had long been used to make hats became especially popular in the United States in the nineteenth century: straw!
Especially in the summer months, men wore the relatively round boats along with the famous Panama hat. At the beginning of the 20th century, the boat has developed into the most popular hat – not only on the water, but also in the cities. When it gets too hot, men can replace their thick hats with a well-ventilated straw hat.
This improved the quality of life – no doubt – but there was one important rule to keep in mind: during the summer months, a straw hat was welcome, but after a certain date it should be replaced by a felt hat. It is September 15th. Even newspapers celebrated this date as Felt Hat Day.
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