At least these snowy Beasts have revived our love for the hat
This month’s Beasts from the East may not have been too good for our spring blooms, but the crop sprouting from human heads has proved flourishing. I refer, of course, to hats – once as necessary to Brits as their stiff upper lips, now largely eschewed until Mother Nature gives us cause.
Jeremy Corbyn has been derided for his Lenin cap – was he donning it to symbolise his Ruskie sympathies post-salisburygate? Unlikely, as he wears it all the time. But Theresa May then confused headgear theorists by appearing in a Cossack-style fur number over the weekend.
Still, both can be applauded for hat-positive stances at a time when even bishops mutter rebelliously about ditching their mitres, lest they appear too elevated in status.
Status and elevation are what hats are all about: warriors’ helmets-cum-exclamation marks, designed to finish our ensembles with aplomb. From the late 19th century until the mid-20th, we Britons were a nation of proud hat wearers, stalwarts in the realm of headgear. Hats designated age, class and aspiration, whether a schoolgirl’s boater, humble flat cap, or lordly topper.
And with them came a world of gesture and metaphor. One tipped one’s hat to a lady, removing it for God and the Queen; one lay down one’s hat to designate home, threw it into the ring, and, where necessary, threatened to eat it.
It was mobility that did for our titfers – mobility both actual and social. The proliferation of covered cars turned pedestrians into passengers, meaning we were no longer battling the elements. Meanwhile, the postwar resistance to class designations meant that such obvious badges of status began to be rejected.
Hairstyles became the thing – be it a beehive or bob – with no one wanting the dreaded hat hair.
The popularity of the chap’s hat took a nose dive after JFK chose not to sport one for his inauguration in 1961, and was never spotted in one thereafter. As Hardy Amies sniffed three years later: “The first signs of age in a man appear in a receding hairline. Thus to go hatless is to display defiantly one’s youth.”
Regarding the fairer sex, the rot had already set in. Christian Dior, writing in 1954, had noted: “The most pressing problem of this time: shall you or shall you not wear a hat?” However, one senses that he is already championing a lost cause, despite his contention that: “Women would be very silly not to take advantage of such an efficient weapon of coquetry.”
I have taken Dior’s words to heart and am never knowingly under accessorised. Accordingly, I boast berets and tam-o’shanters, trilbies and panamas, Cossack furs and college caps, sou’westers and a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker. I have sported peacock plumes to the Baftas, a hot pink bird’s wing to weddings, and a gold filigree tiara to be gondola-ed to the Venice Film Festival. I even own one of the aforementioned bishop’s mitres, acquired at the memorial service for wit-about-town Vincent Poklewski Koziell, owner of several hundred hats, and a man who knew a thing or two about how to live.
March’s opportunity to go snow feral has brought me the greatest joy, giving me the possibility to go hatted everywhere: indoors, in the bath, in bed – a guise I intend maintaining until June. I urge my fellow countrymen to join me and reclaim our national crown.