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When Everyone Wore A Hat...

And of course many would wear hats at work too, not just out on the streets. Viv.

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They put their hats on and were part of the crowd at Sunday morning meetings as shown on this postcard sent from Newcastle to London in 1915. Conformity seemed important in those far off days.
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Lot of hats around the Town Hall in the 1920s, boys in caps, men in boaters, hardly a bare head in sight. Viv.

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I love that photo Viv, blew it up and wondered about all those individuals now long gone, but the buildings and roads still there. amazing.Paul
 
I was two years old when I wore this hat.
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Later when I was at school my mum knitted me a baraclava and I hated it. I used to wear it as she watched me set off to school then I took it off when I was out of sight. Lot of young school girls had 'Pixey Hats' in those days.
 
Were you were posing as Nelson in the hat and with your arm tucked into your coat? Viv.
 
Vivienne14 said:
Were you were posing as Nelson in the hat and with your arm tucked into your coat? Viv.
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It looks like I was Viv .... I notice the bloke in the garden behind is wearing a waistcoat but no hat !

In the early 1930s my Nan, my Mum and her Sister wore hats to go to Sutton Park.
Many years later in the 1950s my Nan still wore a hat on a seaside beach.
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A good reason to make this forum photo pop up here, one of the nicest collection of hats in a Birmingham photo, it's one of my favourites. There seems to be some sort of parade happening. The people in the photo are there at the start of the 20th century and many nice buildings for them to look at around that fountain.
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Eddis as baby 001 - Copy.jpg

And, WITHOUT HAT!!!!!!! My Grandchildren go into hysterics when they see these two photos. My lovely Mum really embarrassed me.

Eddie
 
Cracking photo Eddie, it's amazing what our parents dressed us in back in those days.
 
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As an afterthought, I suspect there are one or two more out there that have similar photos of themselves. These type of photos were very much the 'in thing 'in the thirties.

Eddie
 
old Mohawk,

Thanks for that info. Just looked at those photos. That type of dress was obviously the vogue in those days.

You have either got a terrific memory, or a fantastic filing system, to pull those photos out so fast.

Eddie
 
Hi Eddie,
I use pdf files in my computers and ipad to find photos on the forum. It works most of the time.
oldmohawk
 
Hi yes its an old she saying far back that hats make men bald as well As I recall from my younger days
This is from the younger generation of. My time not my generation Astonian,,,
 
mojorisin21 said:
Yes I'm afraid that, that's the problem with the world today.People are not wearing enough hat's!
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I think wearing of hats faded through the 1930s and dropped off considerably in the late 1940s. I wore a cap when I started a new school as shown in two pics below but soon stopped when older lads had much fun pinching caps and throwing them over walls. The only time I regularly wore a hat was in the RAF.
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I live near the North sea & it does get very windy walking along the prom, & consequently the wind has robbed me of two caps. When i were a nipper, me mam couldn`t afford to buy me clothes, so i was forbidden to go anywhere near the window. Then one day she bought me a cap so i could look out of the window.

Growing old is inevitable, growing up is uptional.
 
Four of my family, all wearing hats, in the mid-1930s. I think that they were probably on an outing to Weston-Super-Mare. The four are, left-to-right, my Mum, her sister, my Nan and one of her sisters. Three of them reached a respectable age, 70s and 80s, but sadly the little girl, second-left, died of medical complications in her early 20s. They all look very smartly dressed. I came along in the early 1940s. Dave.P1020155.JPG
 
I say farmerdave, they all look jolly spiffing. I thought all you farmers were supposed to be poor :-}
 
Smudger said:
I live near the North sea & it does get very windy walking along the prom, & consequently the wind has robbed me of two caps. When i were a nipper, me mam couldn`t afford to buy me clothes, so i was forbidden to go anywhere near the window. Then one day she bought me a cap so i could look out of the window.

Growing old is inevitable, growing up is uptional.
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The old one's are the best, Smudger. I have been known to use this one myself on occasions.

Eddie
 
Really need to ask this. What are the Items the lady on the extreme left and the the third lady in the line carrying under their arm? And just for info, this winter I've taken to wearing a cloche hat just like the third lady. And yes, it flattens the hair, but hey, it keeps you nicely warm. A massive amount of body heat is lost through the head. Vive la cloche! Viv.

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I guess they were their handbags Viv. Agree about wearing a hat in the cold weather - agree but don't do it myself!!
 
I was never really one for hats, or ties unless by convention, so it was a cap at school and a beret or peaked cap in the RAF. My youngest uncle was a fairly conventional dresser and as my father died when I was still a schoolboy, I went about with my uncle quite a lot. His first fad was the beret - from his wartime service in the Army, so when we went to Ireland for three weeks, shortly after my father died, he bought me a beret. I have to say that they are very practical and do not get dislodged by the roughest of winds.

Once I started work, I never wore a hat and would suffer standing in the rain waiting for the bus - there weren't many bus shelters in the 1950s - and just moan about it! Shortly after Krushchev's visit to Britain in 1956, the Russian style hat came into fashion, my uncle bought one and persuaded me to do the same. Certainly comfortable and warm and I think I wore that until they went out of fashion a couple of years later.

So the hat was abandoned again and until I moved to Crete in 2005, I never wore one. But temperatures out here at the height of summer can reach 46C, so although I am well acclimatised, never use suncream (but never lie on beaches - we're not beach people and leave that to the tourists & a few locals), I occasionally wear a baseball cap when up in the mountains. Dad always wore a cloth cap - and a trilby when we went out - but he had even less hair than me!

Recently a few people have complained that Yiannis Varoufakis, the new Greek Finance Minister, doesn't wear a tie or a hat to EU meetings, but that is the style here. The majority of men attending funerals and weddings (and we've been to many) think it is perfectly right and proper to wear jeans and an open-necked shirt. Only the very close family dress up for such occasions, and I must say that that suits me down to the ground! I feel strangled by a tie.

Maurice
 
Black Astrakhan hats Maurice! Forgot about those. Loved the way the fur went in swirls. You see quite a few faux astrakhan items around today too. I think a lot more young people seem to be wearing hats again, sort of fashion statements. There seems to be a lot of choice. I notice our local market has, not one hat stall but two stalls.

I was never a hat person when young - a result of growing up in the 60s - it just wasn't 'cool'. Smacked of the elderly then. But had to wear a school beret in winter and boater in summer, truly excruciating. Now I'm more mature (allegedly !) I quite like the idea of hats. But I'm still a hat newbie. As well as their practicality in winter, I like it as a complement to what I'm wearing. Although I do draw the line at wearing that big sombrero I brought back from Spain all those years ago (remember those and the big straw donkeys ?) !

Viv.
 
Hi Viv,

We still see those Western style hats made of leather in the tourist shops, but I think they identify you as being a tourist so non of the locals wear them. A true Panama hat is very expensive these days, although one of my friends has one. On the right person they look like something out of a Graham Greene novel!

Something else I never used to wear was a scarf, although I have taken to wearing one this winter with this ghastly howling wind that we've had - my old bones are starting to feel the effects of winter - one of the coldest we've had for several years and the reason why Crete has no winter tourist season. Very few of the hotels open, apart from for travelling salesmen, and therefore don't have central heating.

Maurice
 
Hi Viv. In answer to your question regarding the photo in #81, I think the two ladies in question, first person and third person from the left, were just carrying handbags under their arms. It is noticeable that the two elder ladies, 3 and 4 from the left, were wearing or carrying fur accessories. Lady number 3 from the left is carrying a fur coat, while the fourth lady has fur trimmings on the coat cuffs and neck. These two ladies were born in around the 1880s and it would have been quite fashionable for them to wear fur in the 1930s and there were probably no synthetic alternatives. One of the good things of today is that the wearing of real fur is very much frowned upon. I like your red cloche hat, very chic. Dave
 
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