How Cars and Hygiene Killed the Middle-Class Hat

Don’t blame JFK

A crowd photo taken by the Bain News Service shows a whole lot of people in hats crowded around to hear opera singer Geraldine Farrar in 1918. Source: Library of Congress

Few accessories have been more roundly mocked in the past several years than the lowly fedora. Once associated with cool guys like Humphrey Bogart and Indiana Jones, the wide-brimmed beauty has become synonymous with online harassment and a steady diet of Hot Pockets. Forget, of course, that most “fedoras” are actually trilbies (please, please forget it)…