Rules on hats have gone the way of the dodo

SIR – James Bishop (Letters, February 9) wonders whether the unwritten rules for the wearing of hats have changed.

I fear that they went the same way as football rattles, mufflers and costermongers.

There was a time when nearly everyone wore hats, and women had gloves, too. At least Iain Duncan Smith’s trilby is not navy blue, which would always have been considered a touch racy. Peter Owen Woolpit, Suffolk

SIR – In the Sixties, the rule at Sandhurst – very much enforced – was that cadets had to wear a hat, preferably a trilby, to “walk out” in plain clothes at weekends. In the words of our Guards drill sergeant: “How else can you young gentlemen give or return a salute?”

Pork pie hats, flat hats and any other type of hat became de rigueur, as a way of avoiding wearing the hated trilby. Ian Ventham

Wareham, Dorset

SIR – The picture above Mr Bishop’s letter showed two gentlemen in the City, one of whom was wearing a brown suit. This breaches the rule of “never brown in town”. Jonothan Ward

Exmouth, Devon

SIR – My first job, in 1952, was with a Stock Exchange firm of jobbers. Before I started I received a letter from the chief clerk, instructing me to arrive wearing a bowler hat, stiff white collar, white shirt and dark suit, and to carry a rolled umbrella. I was the firm’s most junior employee.

The last time I was in London I don’t think I saw anyone wearing a hat. James Bruxner

Buntingford, Hertfordshire