The Etiquette Of Hats (For Men)

The giants, and also the midgets, of fashion are chirruping that “Hats are backs!” These fine people, who are ever discovering new ways of cladding themselves in black, are wrong. Hats never left us; hats never can leave us. But people can leave hats.

Do you really want to look like this?

People can also return to hats. And returning they are—at such a fast rate that even Walmart now sells pre-pressed small-brimmed fedoras of the type favored by Williamsburg hipsters.

The Wall Street Journal is aware of the phenomenon and reported the lamentations of men who have begun to wear hats but don’t know how to do so properly.

Since the paper offered no advice on the etiquette, it falls to me to provide it, which comes in two parts: Kinds and Places.

The Kind Of Hat To Wear

• Baseball caps are just the thing if one is playing baseball, golf, or some other sport in which it is necessary to shade one’s eyes without restraining the movement of one’s arms. They can be worn as a spectator to these events, though it is a cliché.

  Caps are also appropriate while piloting a tractor, building a deck, chatting up the lumberyard salesman, or other activities directly associated with labor. Otherwise, they should not be worn.

  If they are worn cocked at an absurd angle, inside out, or with the manufacturer’s sticker affixed, you will look like an idiot.

  Unless you are an employee of the organization, you should not, without compensation, wear caps emblazoned with a company logo. Jokes or “witty” slogans, such as “Old Fart”, should be avoided at all costs.

• The main functions of a hat are twofold: to provide balance, and to weatherize your skull.
  • Balance The rules are simple: (1) the more clothes you have on, the thicker your silhouette, the wider the brim of the hat; and (2) the more formal the dress, the more formal the hat.

    If you wear a suit (which you should) over which is a raincoat or topcoat, at least wear a fedora, if not a homburg. The later can only be pulled off by older gentlemen or by ugly, swarthy, or fat men. If you have a baby face, are pretty, or are thin, stick to a fedora. Bowlers and derbies, at least in the States, are lost to history. However, they can be tried if you sport a thick moustache. Opera hats are as ancient as togas.

    Aim for this

    Beaver fur is preferred over rabbit or some other lesser creature. Beaver is more supple, sheds rain better, and is prettier. Without question, Borsalino makes the best, with Stetson a distant second. These hats are expensive, but with proper care, they will last a lifetime.

    Never be cheap in hat or shoes! It always tells.

    The rounder your face, the wider the brim of your hat can be. If, like me, you have a head shaped like it was pushed out by a constipated chicken, narrow brims are a necessity. These are more difficult to find, but do expend the effort. Crown height should be proportional to your physical height.

    Boaters can still be worn, but only by fifty-plus gentlemen wearing summer suits made of linen or seersucker. Everybody else should wear fedora- or Panama-shaped straw. These are also best for more elegant, jacketless summer wear. Hipster hats can be tried, but you run the risk of being mistaken for an Obama supporter or a person in need of a shower.

    Always elegant

    Woven, wool or linen only, caps are fine in nearly all other cases. They are almost required if one is not wearing a jacket. But, please, no logos or other visible writing on the hat!

  • Weatherization

  A baseball cap is a miserable device for preventing the rain from creeping down your neck, or in stopping the sun from blasting the same location. Hats have brims for a purpose. Exploit them.

  Wool, beaver especially, hats shed rain beautifully, and even retain their insulative qualities when saturated.

  Do not accept plastic imitation “straw.” It is cheap, and may even look OK, but they defeats themselves by trapping heat and moisture assiduously.

The Places A Hat May Be Worn

• Hats may be worn everywhere out of doors, and at all times except for Spangled music, funerals and other religious services, or when on the flight line.
• Outdoors, the farther a hat comes off your head when meeting a woman should be directly proportional to how beautiful you find her, or to how much respect you wish to accord.

  For stunning creatures, the hat must come off completely and should be lowered to waist level, held by both hands. For the earnest and unkempt females who accost you on the street with a “Do you have a minute for the environment?” your hat should remain firmly in place.

  With women you know well, unless she is in authority over you, the hat may remain on.

• Hats may be worn indoors, but only when the “indoors” is an out-of-doors by another name; places such as train stations, airports, lobbies, malls, some public houses, and the like. Unless you are “under cover”, i.e. armed and in uniform, for all indoor locations, take off the hat. Yes, even you.

  This must be emphasized, because, as the WSJ reports it, many men new to hats find themselves “offended”—everyone is in a perpetual state of “outrage” these days—to learn they must remove their hat indoors.

  These young men have grown up believing too much in themselves. But they may also have been led astray by the likes of Lizzie Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, who said, “[I]t is OK if a man is wearing a hat at a bar or a nightclub as part of his style.” Miss Post is wrong, of course, and is yet another example of Galtonian regression to the mean. She probably had in mind only the hipster hat, which is not so much a hat as it is a decoration, like a lip piercing.

A hat always works

• Take your hat off in restaurants, but hold on to it, unless you can be sure the coat check girl knows what to do with it. Most of these fair ladies haven’t any experience with head coverings, and will toss your hat onto a pile of coats, where it may be crushed. It is here, as it is in many milieu, wise to tip in advance. Five dollars is sufficient, with a “Would you please take good care of this?” If you don’t want to tip, don’t go out to eat.
• If you do not want to remove your hat because it will expose your “messy hair,” consider a sex change operation: you will lead a happier life. Real men do not fret over their coiffes. Besides, if upon doffing your cap, you reveal a tangled mess, you probably need a bigger hat. Or a haircut.

Those who want to learn more can visit The Fedora Lounge, an excellent site for men’s classic style.

Update Cowboy hat etiquette (as asked by M Sittnick). These lids may be worn when working on a farm or ranch, when actually riding a horse, or when “walking the fence.” They can be worn with suits or in working clothes.

But if you are an accountant, college administrator, manager of any sort, or the kind of person who cannot identify a transmission, and you attempt to wear a cowboy hat into a working-man’s bar, you may end up in a fight. Which you will, deservedly, lose.