by Clair Hughes
The Perfect Hat? Clair Hughes is an independent scholar. She
previously held the position of Professor of English and American Literature at the International Christian
University, Tokyo, Japan. She is the author of Hats (2017),
Dressed in Fiction (2005) and Henry James and the Art of Dress (2001)
One of the most thoughtful and entertaining fashion writers today is Robert Armstrong, the US financial commentator of the Financial Times. Recently he wrote of his search for the perfect hat. Being bald, he says, hats are important, but being also style-conscious and working in the largely conservative world of finance, finding the right hat is tricky. Men in hats now, he says, can look a little silly – anachronistic and ‘showy-off’, not a good look on Wall Street. Armstrong thinks it unlikely that when John F. Kennedy took his hat off to give his 1961 inaugural address, the hat’s understood role in the male work uniform ended. But still, he says, something changed. Perfection therefore does not simply lie in the hat’s aesthetic appearance, in the silk of a topper or the plumes of a beaver, but in its meaning at a given time, and whether it fits within what dress historian Anne Hollander calls “the accustomed frame of how things look”. In 1937 The Hatters’ Gazette, noting declining sales, warned: “We can produce perfect hats but we cannot change the human mind.” Britain’s ‘accustomed frame’ was emptying
of male hats in the 1960s: the businessman’s trilby limped on some years, but by 1975 my father had hung his up. Incapable of leaving the house hatless, however, he bought a tweed cap. By 1980 the banker’s bowler, having lingered in the City, had taken on symbolic rather than material life. But a hat vacuum cannot long be tolerated – what men put on their heads is about power. A woman’s hat is a fashion item, perhaps ‘perfect’ but ephemeral: the wrong hat is a lapse of taste, but for a man, potentially calamitous. In France, a plumed felt, perfect in 1785, might cost you your head in Revolutionary 1790. The overthrow of aristocratic plumes by the
Men wearing various caps, Dover, England, c. 1910
peasant’s bonnet rouge was a seismic power shift. For American men in the 1970s who wished their heads covered, the baseball cap, says Armstrong, became the default headgear. Cheap, classless, and initially with no reference other than to sport, the baseball cap was almost ‘perfect’: practical, not unattractive and fine for walking the dog. But there, says Armstrong, it stops; ‘irretrievably youthful’, it was never formidable. A Wall Street journalist pointed out that it did attract “zillionaires who want to cosplay as normal people enjoying the outdoors”. But when it became a vehicle for political slogans, it was time for men like Armstrong to look elsewhere. The Financial Times rarely concerns
itself with hats, but Armstrong’s dilemma prompted a London reader to recount how, wanting “to transition from baseball caps,” he bought a wool flat cap, and then a linen version for summer. The following week, an Irish correspondent, extolling the adaptability of caps, quoted a James Joyce story in which a thirsty Dublin clerk – au fait with protocol – points out to the chief clerk that his hat still hangs on the office rack, but once outside, takes a plaid shepherd cap from his pocket and goes in search of a beer. Protocol is maintained – in Irish fashion. Pursuing the topic, the FT’s politics editor admitted to a mistrust of hats, but sensing a need, tried a beret, then a baseball cap, finally settling on a baker boy. The ‘accustomed frame’ has fundamentally and interestingly changed when the business world finds that the bakerboy, the newsboy or the tweed shepherd may now be the ‘perfect hat’.
november 2025 | 27
Photo: Alamy
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102
