About Vintage Style Men's Hats
Vintage styles and accessories go in and out of fashion every couple of years, becoming popular with the trends the industry chooses to revamp and fading when a new trend emerges. Dress or formal hats, in particular, never fully made a comeback with the general population. However, it is this lack of overexposure that makes a vintage-style men's hat always fashionable. Does this Spark an idea?
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Function
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Headwear, in general, is designed to keep the head warm and protect the face from sun, wind and the elements. People lose about 85 percent of their body heat through the head, particularly during cold or rainy seasons. In addition to practical uses, hats make a statement about those wearing them. A hat may indicate an occupation, social class or age, or may give an impression of a person's style and personality. Some subcultures have adopted certain hats as an expression of the style of the group, and some companies use hats to present a unified corporate identity.
History
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Head coverings have been used since primitive humans first learned to make clothing, but the hat styles commonly thought of as "vintage" in the Western world did not come into existence until about 1600, when fur felt became a popular material for men's dress hats. Like earlier times when headwear made a statement about a person's status, dress hats were tools of etiquette. No matter the social status of a man, he was expected to wear a hat, though the type of hat might vary with his social position and occupation. By the 1900s, men's hats became more casual as men chose comfort and individual style over some of the more formal models, and largely disappeared entirely from popular use by the 1960s.
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Features
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Vintage men's hats are usually made or straw or felt, and are discussed in terms of four components: the brim, the crown, the peak and the hatband. Usually the widest part of the hat, the brim is a circular, stiffly-formed projection that is attached to the crown, the part of the hat that covers the top of the head. The peak, or bill, is a front-projecting part designed to block out rain and sun, and is often seen on hats without a wide brim. Hatbands are placed around the bottom of the crown and are sometimes fitted with an adjustable cord in modern hats.
Types
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The popularity of some vintage hats has remained fairly steady in modern times. The fedora, or gangster fedora, is one of the most visible kinds. This hat can be worn in multiple ways to signify individuality and comes in many colors, one of the reasons it was adopted into the extreme style of gangsters in the 1930s. Other often-worn vintage style men's hats are the felt porkpie, the curled-brim homburg, the derby, the straw boater, and the straw Panama hat, which was first popularized in the United States by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Effects
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Dress hats have not been universally worn since the early twentieth century, so those that choose to wear vintage style men's hats stand out from the crowd. These courageous hat-lovers revive hat trends from time to time, often putting a new twist on a style through the use of unconventional color or pattern, or by wearing the hat in an unusual way, such as adjusting the way the hat sits on the head or pairing the hat with eccentric clothing. The use of a vintage hat says something about a man.
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