Monica Makes Sense: If you want to get ahead, get a hat

If you want to get ahead, get a hat! That was one of the advertising slogans around in the 1930s and attributed to the Hat Council who made it clear that to get on in life you must wear a hat.

It was also used a decade or so later by hat manufacturers Dunn and Co who obviously had a vested interest! I wonder how many people remember their shops in the city centre.

It is certainly true that many very famous people throughout history have been recognised by their headgear.

Admiral Nelson always wore a bicorn, Winston Churchill a homburg, Abraham Lincoln a silky stove pipe top hat, Frank Sinatra a fedora, Bob Marley a woollen beanie, Sherlock Holmes a deerstalker and every cowboy, a Stetson.

We remember many of the famous film stars of the past by the amazing hats they wore in movies.

Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner were just a few.

Of recent times, hat wearing has gone through a bit of a decline and has unhappily, not even always been in evidence in some modern-day weddings, although you can still identify weddings of class by the lovely hats or fascinators worn.

A Royal wedding always sees a re-surgence in hat purchases.

It was certainly different back in the day, certainly from the fifties and sixties when there would have been real competition for best hat from both the bride’s mother and grooms’ mother, not to mention all the rest of the female guests.

Up to the 1960s any respectable gentleman sported a hat as part of his daily attire.

I remember how important hats were when I was growing up. There seemed to be almost no occasion when my parents didn’t wear one.

In fact, it was considered unthinkable for mother to be seen outside without one even when just visiting the local shops, whilst father would have no more thought of leaving the house without a hat than without their trousers.

My father wore a trilby hat. He worked in insurance and so it seemed to be the sort of hat that white collar workers would wear.

If on holiday, he wore a Panama hat.

It was quite usual for men wearing hats with brims to tip their hat if meeting a lady.

It didn’t seem to work quite so well with a cloth cap!

If you look at old photos taken a hundred or even fifty years ago, especially those of the spectators at football matches there would be few adults without a hat.

Hat wearing was in its peak in the 1930s.There were so many types of hats.

Schoolboys wore caps, small girls wore sailor hats.

Politicians, businessmen and bank managers wore bowlers, with toffs and public-school boys wearing top hats.

Flat caps seemed to denote a working-class wearer and were in abundance at football matches, race meetings and when coming out of the factory or steelworks.

And boaters were worn at sporting events held in places like Lords Cricket Ground.

Men’s hats were always removed during the playing of the National Anthem which again seems to be pretty much a thing of the past apart from international football matches!

My mother’s everyday hats were purchased from C&A Modes or from Banners at Attercliffe, which seemed like a proper day out for my sister and myself as we always had a snack in Banners Cafe.

But if she wanted to purchase a hat for a special occasion it was always from the iconic hat makers, ‘Madam Marie’s’ on Division Street.

It’s difficult to pin down the time when hat wearing started to decline.

The advent of the motor car certainly played a part as far as men were concerned.

Once cars became more affordable, into the 1960s, male drivers didn’t seem to wear a hat when driving quite as frequently as they had before.

Also, there were different kinds of hairstyles coming into fashion amongst young men and a hat would have spoilt the look of the High Quiff Pompadours and Ducks Arses which were becoming popular thanks to the influences of stars like Elvis Presley and James Dean, who were quoted as saying that hats were ‘uncool’.

And in the 1960s, when long hair came into fashion for young men, hats would have spoilt the look they wanted.

But funnily enough it is that generation who are starting to wear some sort of headgear again to keep their bald heads warm!

Today the most popular kind of hat is the baseball cap, another American import, which has been described by hat manufacturers as cheap and nasty things!

Like trainers, they seem to be an integral part of the wardrobe of today’s males!

My memory of hats goes back to the bottle green velour hats we wore to grammar school, and which were the bane of our lives.

As soon as we got on the tram home, we removed them and stuffed them into our satchels. They were rather misshapen by the time we finally left school!