Mary Kenny: Tressed to impress -- how headgear became old hat
Colin Farrell, seen here in Los Angeles last week, is in the minority of modern men who will sport a hat
Freezing, isn't it? Look on the bright side: a cold winter is God's way of telling the climate change fanatics that the weather is something you can never predict with certainty.
A cold winter is also healthier than a mild one: it kills off more of the bugs.
But to me there is also a fascinating sociological question accompanying cold weather: how cold does it have to get before people in general wear hats?
One of the most striking aspects of life -- in both Britain and Ireland today -- is the ingrained habit of going about bareheaded.
Yes, as the temperature drops, you see a few more heads covered -- from hoodies to those woolly bobble hats that look like knitted condoms -- but however cold the weather there are still plenty of bare heads.
It is just not usual to wear hats any more -- with the single exception of the decorative piece of millinery worn at a race meeting or perhaps a wedding. And even then, the fascinator -- a charming, but wispy, little confection -- is gradually supplanting the hat.
The last time I looked for a hat department in Brown Thomas in Grafton Street I was told there was none. There are a few woolly things for sale -- and some pretty fascinators -- but no millinery department any more.
I was devastated. The end of civilisation as we know it.
Even discounting the fact that I am something of a hat fetishist, it is still objectively true that the hat has lost ground in our lifetimes.
When I've asked people why they don't wear a hat -- even when the temperature hits zero -- they reply, with an air of astonishment: "It's funny. I just never think of it."
That is the truth at its simplest. Most people don't think of a hat as part of their everyday apparel. The millinery habit has been lost.
And I would suggest there are three main reasons: one is that hair has become a big feature in contemporary life. Glamour icons have glossy, opulent and prominent hair, elaborately coiffed. It started with Brigitte Bardot and Farrah Fawcett in the 1960s and 1970s, and from there on, hair gained primacy over hats.
Today, from Cheryl Cole to Grainne Seoige, from Jordan to Amy Winehouse, from Nicole Kidman to every young female in the western world presenting the weather forecast on TV, the primary focus is hair. Glossy, sexy, tresses falling about the shoulders.
And as every woman knows, you cannot have both a stunning hair-do and a hat. Hats invariably squash down expensively maintained hair. Hair is much sexier than hats, and in some societies -- from Jewish culture to modern Islam, and even in Christian societies such as Armenia -- hair is such a turn-on that a modest woman goes about wearing a scarf.
Defeat Number 1 for the hat is hair. Some women would rather freeze to death than disturb their hair.
Defeat Number 2 for the hat is class connotations. Hats have often been associated with social rank -- cartoons directed against the rich all through the 19th and early 20th Century depicted the men in top hats, and the women in an array of ostrich feathers.
In Britain, John Cleese and the two Ronnies did an unforgettable TV sketch of class differences in which Cleese, representing the upper class, wore a bowler; Ronnie Barker, as middle-class man wore a trilby; and Ronnie Corbett, as the working-class, had a flat cap. The sketch is always revived as an illustration of how hats defined class distinctions.
It was President Kennedy -- known as "Hatless Jack" -- who most visibly broke the tradition of hat-wearing for men. His bareheadedness was seen as a signal of a new classlessness.
In Ireland, there may also have been a reaction against the custom of women having to wear hats in church, which was dropped in the 1960s.
Defeat Number 3 for the hat is television, and now, the internet. No one ever wears a hat on TV -- with the exception, again, of the race meeting. Male commentators on the turf are permitted a neat Derby or a tweed flat cap, and the females may wear an emblematic hat for Ladies' Day, but apart from that, TV is a hatless affair, even for reporters in the driven snow. And since people commonly copy what they see on TV, hatlessness becomes the norm.
The drop in the temperature has nudged a slight revival in male headgear -- the "fur trapper" hat has regained an element of utility, as well as the woolly beanies that provide warmth even if they lack elegance. There are a couple of stylish males of my acquaintance who wear Fedoras: but these are regarded as signifying a certain eccentricity.
The Russian Cossack hat, in mink or sable, looks fabulous on men: but here I am getting carried away with fashion fantasy.
There is one reason to be glad of the decline of the hat (apart from the gains for glossy hair): throughout social history, milliners were often more lowly paid than anyone else in the fashion industry. The poor little milliner, on the brink of starvation, was a stock figure in Charles Dickens' journalism. Coco Chanel started off as a milliner, but soon realised it was very hard to make money.
Still, in continental Europe today, people wear hats in winter far more than in Ireland or Britain. Walk down the streets of any Belgian, Dutch or Northern French city, and in this climate, almost everyone is behatted. As for the Nordics, it goes without saying that they wrap up their heads: the beanie originally comes from Norway.
Hats are a normal part of their everyday apparel, shaped by a practical approach to climate. If the winter cold persists, the penny will eventually drop, even in Grafton Street.
- Mary Kenny
Irish Independent
