by James Coplin

Created on: December 18, 2009

Men wear a hat for one of two reasons. The first is style and image - a statement not only of who they are but who they wish to be seen as. The second is a matter of function and occasionally there is that happy hybrid that combines the two into an expression of distinctive taste and fashion. Its literally true that a man can be known by his hat.

From the earliest days, a hat has been expected to do more then just keep the rain off ones head. Sitting around the tribal fires, one could tell at a glance that the Big Bosses were the ones in the towering headpieces. In military circles the plumes, dressings and insignias of an officers hat separated them from the lowly enlisted and identified who was commanding the Ship or the Battalion, Any man of substance from the 17th century to the last quarter of the 20th would no more go about in public bare headed then he would without trousers.  The felt or silk Top Hat, the Bowler, the Derby, the Fedora; these were hallmarks of the level headed man of business and gentlemen of substance. 

Then in the 1960s President John Kennedy walked his inaugural parade uncapped and issued in the decline of the hat. Where the hat was once the crown of the fashionable man, it became the calling card of the extroverted and even eccentric. It's final nail in the fashion coffin was its replacement by the baseball cap. Men in expensive suit coats now feel perfectly comfortable strolling around with one on their heads, many of them seemingly unsure of which way the bill should go. Try and picture men like Robert Mitchem, Cary Grant or  Humphrey Bogart walking the red carpet with a Dodgers cap turned backwards. It's enough to make you shiver.

Yet in certain parts of the country, especially in the West and Southwest, the hat remains not only alive but with all its old style and status. Consider if you will the Cowboy Hat and all its many virtues!

The Cowboy or Western hat originated with the blending of the Spanish Grandee's Bolero and the Mexican Vaquero's Sombrero - a marriage of fashion and function unique in the annals of Hat-dom. Its uses were endless. They shaded the neck and face, kept the head dry and could be used to fan campfires or carry water. They protected one from low hanging branches or could be used to whip a belligerent cow away or swat a bucking bronco on the neck. Tossing one in the air told the whole world you were happy and throwing it to the ground let folks know you were mad. You could

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