jaimezepeda said:
Not only are hats a gray area, they are a rather rare area. It is rare to see a man wearing a hat nowadays other than a baseball cap or cowboy hat.
My hobby prompts me to research old photographs (late 19th century to depression era) taken outdooors and almost every man in almost every photograph is wearing a hat.
I cannot recall any man in our office ever wearing a hat as they arrive at work except when it was snowing outside and they needed to keep their head warm.
Why is it that men do not wear hats as much as they used to?
Jaime
Jamie:
Would you also say that there were a lot more coats and ties in those old photos? I think style and decorum have changed (see Wes' post below on evolution). We (and Americans especially, I suspect) tend to do what is expedient at whatever moment in time we occupy. As a result, we dress more casually. Frankly, ties are a lot of trouble, and those jackets can be a little hot.
The hats in your pictures are the old straw hats, bowlers, derbys, and whatever you call those stylish men's hats of the 1950s, right?
How many have an advertising logo on them? The fact that we accept advertising almost everywhere has made many people the modern equivalent of sandwich board wearers, at less cost to the advertiser. Imagine. Many times the caps are "free" to the wearer, but often they are purchased by the end user, and a licensing fee is tacked on for the logo. This fee is then paid to the person doing the advertising. What a concept.
The cowboy hat also makes a social statement ("all hat and no cattle" jokes aside).
So, while many of us take the expedient route in deciding what to wear, that in itself may, in my mind, be taken as a sign of the "relaxing of the rules" in general, irregardless of the fact that I would like to continue wearing no coat and no tie to work.
(Sorry, Wes. Using that word is clumsy, isn't it?)
Wingtips are out of the question.
So, if my perception is true, it begs the question: Does less formal attire mean less formal interaction? I don't know of any studies, but I do have anecdotal evidence from some bar owner friends; Make people wear decent clothes and they at least act like like they have more sense, and/or many of the real troublemakers won't bother getting into decent clothes so that they can frequent such an establishment. If you have seen the movie Roadhouse, you know what I mean.