Customer Reviews

Hatless Jack

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Imagine if all of a sudden men starting going outside without pants on. (Let's for the moment ignore the teenagers who wear them so low they are essentially pantless, wearing tall socks rather than trousers.) We would be startled, shocked, confused, and wonder what had happened. Well, this is what occurred during the 20th Century with hats. Look at old photos of busy New York streets and you'll see every head covered. Rich, poor, young, old. No difference. Yet this essential piece of attire virtually disappeared within a generation. And no one really noticed.

The traditional tale is that Kennedy's inauguration did it in. But this book clearly establishes that is not true. No, it was a gradual slide that picked up steam, and in my father's generation (born in 1930) completely vanished. For him a hat was what old men wore, and though he had one for the rare occasion when he wanted to look more mature, after about 1960 he never wore it again. Look at the famous photo of Ruby shooting Oswald. The old guys in authority, and Ruby himself, are all wearing their hats; the younger guys are not. A fedora today is an affectation, an attempt to stand out. Whereas, as Steinberg so vividly points out, NOT wearing a hat, or wearing the out of season hat, could bring anything from insults to assaults.

I was fascinated by the entire book. Well written, well organized, well constructed. I only wish there had been illustrations to show me what all these various headpieces were. But as social history, this is one of the most illuminating and insightful looks at cultural change I've ever read.

I'm of two minds about this book. Neil Steinberg has produced a great history of the form and content of hat-wearing, and the decline of the behatted male in the United States. I learned a great deal about the industry, the importance of hats to the idea of the well-dressed man, and the many forces that came together to send the noble fedora and its cousins into their long decline. And also about John F. Kennedy.

But while the author has done a fine job with the facts, I'm still not sure I buy all his interpretation of them. He strikes me as far too willing to buy into the cliché -- true in its most basic form, perhaps, but far too exaggerated in the popular mind -- of the dull, conformist, gray 1950s and the lively, individualist, color-saturated '60s.

Perhaps he should, as the Randians would say, check his premises -- particularly his evident assumption that informality equals authenticity and self-expression. But if it is "conformist" for a man to wear a hat at a time when all men wear hats, why is it a sign of rebellious nonconformity to abandon hats when all men are abandoning them? Are we really any more individualist today, when forty-something men go to the mall dressed in the same long t-shirts, baggy shorts, and giant sneakers worn by their twelve year old sons? If you want to demonstrate individuality and self-expression through your dress today, gentlemen, the best way to do so is with suit, tie, and a well-maintained snap-brim. But, check out this book first to make sure you know when to tip the fedora, and to whom.

I'll never look at the top hat, from which the magician conjures the bunny, in the same way ever again.

HATLESS JACK is one of those fascinating treatises about a subject with which you wouldn't otherwise think to concern yourself. In this case, it's men's hats - Stetsons, derbies, fedoras, straw boaters, toppers - and the history, customs, etiquette, and practical pitfalls surrounding their use in America . More importantly, the book examines the demise of the hat as a necessary component of the well-dressed man's wardrobe. As the title implies, the disappearance of the hat from American male fashion can perhaps be largely attributed to President John Kennedy's aversion to wearing such. In debunking this theory, author Neil Steinberg, while incidentally writing an engaging (albeit superficial) narrative about America's youngest President, traces the decline of fashionable headgear back to the 1890's when female theater patrons found it obliging to remove their large and elaborate hats so people sitting behind could see the stage. From there, despite the heyday of fedoras and straw hats in the 1920s, it was all downhill, much to the consternation of the nation's hatmakers.

HATLESS JACK is also a compendium of historically interesting trivia. Did you know that the Hat Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1732, forbade American colonists from selling hats abroad or to each other, as well as the physical conveyance of hats by boat or horse? Or that the wearing of summer straw hats beyond September 15th could cause social unrest to the extent of rioting in the streets? Or that hatcheck girls of the 20s and 30s occupied a social position "halfway between a sister and a slut"?

HATLESS JACK cries out for a photo section; its sole deficiency is that it has none. There are supposedly pictures of JFK wearing a top hat during his inauguration (though he mostly carried it). I'd love to see one.

Oddly, Steinberg fails to mention the enduring association of hats, even to contemporary times, with that icon of Americana, the western cowboy. That phenomenon could have filled a chapter all by itself. (Country-western singers don't count.)

And do I own a hat? I do, actually - a grey canvas number reminiscent of that worn by Indiana Jones. I sport it at a jaunty angle on my out-of-state vacations to remind the local rubes that I'm not a swell to be trifled with.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much this little book captivated me. I was looking for a well written book on men's hats and the fraternity of hat wearing culture. This turned out to be so much more and yet not distinctly about either subject.

Telling a historical tale about hats, the hat industry, and male hat wearing customs the author spends most of his time in the era of JFK mainly because most fashion historians identify this period as the demise of hat wearing as a cultural imperative in the western world.

During this journey we are pleasantly led back and forward through history for many interesting and valuable anecdotes on hat culture and history. Once the journey is complete the reader is much more versed in hat culture than simply reading a "how to" book about wearing hats. He leaves with a gut understanding of why a "gentleman" would go to all the trouble and expense of wearing "fine" headwear and a more than inquisitive yearning to join the dwindling fraternity of men who live in felt & straw hats.

More than a person should ever need to know but for ANYONE who loves hats, likes history and wants a good debunker of a book, this is it. I love this book. Use the information in it during hat tours here at the National Hat Museum in Portland, Oregon. Highly recommend this book.

Steinberg has written a thought provoking book about how men's hats went the way of the buffalo in America. He views the event largely through the lens of JFK and his aversion to hats, something that seems to be largely an urban legend magnified by newspaper writers eager to perpetuate Kennedy's youthful and maverick image.

When it sticks to recounting the history of hats the book is fascinating, and reading about such forgotten things as the sometimes violently enforced "Straw Hat Day" and the hat check racket powerfully convey how prevalent and important hats used to be. More images would have helped here, since the most modern readers will have little clue as to to the difference between a boater and a stingy brim fedora.

Less interesting is the recurring thread of the hat industry trying to get Kennedy to feature a hat more prominently in his wardrobe. It gets repetitive as the requests must have seemed to JFK. The backdrop of the history of the hat is better than theme of Kennedy as an icon rebuffing the hat industry as it tries to turn back the tide of bare headed men.

Hatless Jack failed to convince me that Homburgs and fedoras were cast away because they were inconvenient symbols of soulless conformity, and the lack of hats nowadays is a symptom of windblown free spirit and more liberated times.

The author makes more sense when he sites an increasingly indoor, motorized and informal society moving almost unconsciously away from a fashion than when he tries to show some sort of meaningful revolution against hats.

It's a well written, interesting book and it only drags when it goes to the JFK/Hatters angle too many times. I'm glad I read it, and it has prompted me to consider aquiring a real hat, baseball caps be damned.

Why didn't JFK wear a hat to his inauguration?

This mystery has intrigued us for four decades, and the answer is at hand in this wonderful little book.

Now, if this is the only reason you might want to read this book, I'll wreck it for you: in actual fact, JFK DID wear a hat at his inauguration. But, for some reason, there was a pervasive myth indicating that he did not. When he gave his famous address, he had removed his hat, that's true. But he did wear it to the podium. And we learn here that it was a long tradition that, unless the speaker was not going to talk for very long, the speaker removed his hat as a gesture of respect for the crowd.

The book really could be called the history of men's hats. In the bargain, we learn about tipping, servility, fashion and silliness. And, lest you laugh too hard at fashions gone by, look at how many things we do today which are inexplicably linked to no discernable logic other than mindless fashion:

1. We drive SUVs equipped with four-wheel drive and huge towing capacities, and they never leave big cities.

2. We spend $4 for a cup of coffee and regard its cardboard cup as a status statement.

3. We bid up the price of a styrofoam cup Elvis was alleged to drink from to as much as $500.

4. We wear boxer shorts which, a generation ago, would have driven our locker roommates to give us atomic wedgies.

So, the truth is out. JFK wore a hat to his inauguration but removed it to say:

"Hat not, what your country can do for you. Hat what you can do for your haberdasher."

Or words to that effect.

I can't distinguish between Trilby's and Fedoras, I'm not sure I want to. They may even be the same thing. I was born in the same year that President Kennedy was assassinated, and I didn't know that there was a generally held belief that, because he didn't wear a hat at his inauguration, that he was responsible for the worldwide decline in hat wearing. Steinberg's book shows that this proposition is untrue on two counts - that hat wearing was declining throughout the Twentieth Century, and that, in fact, President Kennedy did wear a hat during his inauguration - in the procession up to it, tipping it to his father, and in the parade after it - but not in the memorable portions of it.

Steinberg's book accumulates a significant amount of information that might be classified as social history or even incidental detail - the change in fashion for hats from top hats to less formal attire; the expense of owning a hat - hat check stalls were leased out by hotels and restaurants, and the leasees were accused of keeping both the fees and the tips; the vain, though valiant efforts, of hat companies to fight the tide of hatless-ness.

He counters the view that hatless-ness was inevitable, pointing out that tie-wearing could be seen as equally obsolete and yet continued through the twentieth century. I think he's on thin ice with this argument, given the increasing popularity of `smart-casual' tieless-ness and `dress down Friday's'.

The book also paints a picture of how Kennedy represented youth, vigour and change in 1960. His bareheadedness was part of this, so, apparently were the two-button suits which he favoured. His patrician-cool style was also apparent in his dislike of the usual hoopla of politics, he vowed never to raise both of his arms together, and politely refused to don almost all headgear - hats, Indian feathers- which he was offered on the campaign trail. There is a quite effective description of the impression left by Kennedy, especially his inauguration. Steinberg poses, but does not answer, the question as to why we remember him as hatless, when in fact he had a hat, and wore it for some of the occasion.

Having read it, I am not sure why I did so, I have no interest in fashion or social history. However I would recommend it as a good, off-beat read. I think the book (I read the paperback version) would have benefited from pictures, which might have helped identify the various types of hat being referred to. One effect of this book however, is that I have started to watch black and white movies with renewed awareness of the hats, I recently watched a Jimmy Stewart movie, and was quite taken with the fact that he kept his hat on in the car.

I started wearing these kinds of hats just under a year ago. Having no background with such hats (my parents didn't either, I don't think), I was able to pick up quite a bit of "proper" hat etiquette from this book. Mostly, though, it was very interesting to see how JFK's dislike of hats was perceived as a catalyst for the "mandatory" hat-wearing of 50 years ago to fade.

In our business there is an awful lot of hand-wringing about the good old days when all well-dressed men wore hats. Hatters opine and whine about President Kennedy's refusal to wear hats resulting in a devastating effect on the industry. Neil Steinberg in Hatless JACK sets the record straight and debunks the assumption that JFK ruined the hat business. Instead, Steinberg places Kennedy's aversion to hats in the context of a trend in hatlessness that had been gaining momentum since the turn of the previous century. This is a well-researched and entertaining book, full of information and anecdotes pertaining to the historical importance of hats in American culture. Hatless JACK: The President, the Fedora, and the History of an American Style gives ever-more credence to what hat people understand - a hat is not just another article of apparel.