WITH HAT ON THE HEAD

I consider myself an absolute fan of hats, so elegant, only they bring that "Je ne sais quoi" so chic to a look. It is true that wearing a hat, far from being used only to cover yourself from the cold or heat, makes you go unnoticed. I feel that, when wearing a hat, all eyes are fixed more, but I cannot guess why it attracts so much attention, when not so long ago, it was a basic of any feminine and masculine wardrobe. Currently its main use is for special events such as weddings or the famous "Ascot" races. At what point have we stopped wearing hats and we have not noticed?

To find the answer to this question, I investigated the history of this peculiar complement. I invite you to carry out this brief review of its history with me.

The etymological origin of the word hat comes from the Latin umbra = shadow . Alluding to the nature of the use to which this accessory was directed. Its history, therefore, goes a long way. In the first civilizations of humanity hats are already found, for example, in Phrygia and Anatolia the Phrygian was used , a kind of conical hood that the Greeks also used and served to symbolize that whoever wore it had been a slave and was he had granted freedom. In Greece, other hats were also used, such as the crown (filter) or petal (a round hat). In general, it was a garment used by the peasantry because it served to protect from rain and sun. This hat or pilos knew variants in Europe, where it resurfaced in university environments at the end of the Middle Ages: the square mortarboard.

The hat began as an exclusively male garment, but was later appropriated by women. It was in the 18th century, when its use and abuse among the ladies made the headgear industry a business . Mobilizing large resources, Milan became by then a very important manufacturing center. Hats were loved so much that even men used them again in the 19th century , putting aside wigs. And it is that the social customs had changed: now it was necessary to uncover the head in the churches, inside closed rooms, in the presence of a lady or to initiate the gesture of the greeting. So much so that John Etherington invented the top hat . He had this idea when he saw the gentlemen ceremoniously greeting the ladies by lowering their bowler hats. He thought that in the nature of the hat lay largely the secret of the greeting

ritual. There were riots, stones were thrown, and such was the scandal that poor John Etherington, a reputed dandy, was charged with public scandal and arrested.

Ladies hats also evolved. Pamelas , named after the protagonist of one of the English novels Samuel Richardson, who wore this type of hat with a very wide brim, were famous in the 19th century. Also the women's hat called fedora , made of soft felt with a groove in the center and a flexible brim. This feminine hat became even more popular with the addition of a veil and feather. In this way, it became the most coveted hat that a lady could wear while strolling through the gardens on a bicycle.

From Napoleon Bonaparte's bicorn to the bowler hat, passing through the deerstalker (the one that Sherlock Holmes wore) or the cloche hat of the flappers, there have been a multitude of hats throughout time. Although as we said they are associated with all cultures, hats have had special importance in Western culture for centuries, but it was at some point in the 20th century when they stopped being used and all because of the political and sociocultural changes that emerged over time. of the World Wars.

The 20th century was revolutionary for fashion in many ways, as clothing went from being handcrafted and meticulously produced to being made by mass production and minimalism, and many garments were lost along the way, such as hats. Let's see how the use of the hat was lost throughout this century:

The turning point was the First World War . In an age when women had to work as nurses tending to wounded soldiers, in the fields or in factories, hats seemed impractical. Despite this, they were not discontinued at that time and a young Coco Chanel opened her first hat workshop, which would soon be her rise to fame. The 1920s in Europe, in which the formal rules on how to dress began to relax, were the perfect time for people to choose to remove

hats from time to time, which, although still used (especially by the upper classes) already it was not seen as an obligation. A curious story in relation to the hat at this time is the origin of the name of Spanish female artists known as "Las sin sombrero". This name was given to them because of the anecdote told by the painter Maruja Mallo, who, on one occasion, said that, after returning from exile, they were booed when she was walking through the Puerta del Sol back in the 1920s with Margarita Manso, Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, and both women did not wear hats. Walking without the garment was an act of rebellion and transgression that, today, generally accustomed to not wearing a hat, seems unimaginable to us.

Surprisingly, in the 30s it went back a bit and new transgressive models appeared like those of Elsa Schiaparelli.

However, in the 40s , with the Second World War and the shortage of material, they stopped being produced again. After the war, in the 1950s , two positions emerged: on the one hand, it was possible to reuse garments that had been impossible to access during the war; On the other, it was concluded that hats were not a matter of life and death and could be lived without. In communist countries, hats began to be seen as a symbol of the capitalist enemy, and they were looked down upon in the early days.

The 60s and 70s marked a before and after for fashion. Not only well-known figures such as the Beatles or Elvis denied the use of the hat, making it bohemian, but also marketing began to focus on young people, and hats no longer fell within that target, as they were considered excessively refined and classic, more typical of older people. Thus the hat stopped being used and as a similar accessory, the wool cap began to be worn because of the hip-hop movement of the 90s.

Curious evolution right? Be more than hats, pamelas or woolen caps ... Let's recover the use of the hat without remorse to show it off! Would you like to know what types of hats are most used today and how to choose a good hat? Let me know in the comments and I'll prepare another post.