1930's to ? - YEARS FLEW

No matter how sparse the shelf space, there was always room for hat boxes in Mama's closet. A trip downtown for her, dragging me along, meant she would get a pretty hat from its box and take a pair of gloves from the drawer. We each put on clean clothes and took the noisy, smelly streetcar to downtown Baltimore. By the time I was eight, I knew the importance of hats having received one to match the red and white sun outfit Mama bought me. My best friend and cousin, Roz, got the same set in blue and weren’t we the cat’s meow in our twin beach HATS !
       
Mama and her friends wore small clinging ones, which they could stack on top of each other when not in use. Just to sit on our front bench to watch neighbors walk by or to see to it we kids didn’t run in the busy street demanded a hat.  Lots of ladies wore big ones and had to be  reminded to take them off in the movies.

 

Tony’s barber shop was a few doors away from our house. Even in there was a brass rack for the men to have a safe place to put their hats. Still they feared as a sign right above the rack said ‘Watch your hat and coat.’ My Zadie had a straw boater that he wore until summer was long gone. Mr. Binder, a fat cigar-chewing family friend, was very special walking up and down our block with his bowler jauntily set. My Daddy had a gray fedora that slouched at an angle making him a bit frightening to some–but not to me.

 

The hat industry was huge. Every department store had salesladies trained to say, ‘That’s you, that’s really you!’  Their charm usually worked. My second job out of high school was with a large men’s hat firm where I recorded the hundreds of hats shipped out daily. A new casual hat was designed and  employees had a contest to name it. My suggestion did not win. The leisure hats ended up being called Flip-It and did extremely well in the market place. I didn't and quit that boring job.

 

Not until I was engaged to my husband-to-be did I truly realize how important hats were. His knowledge of color, style, fabric made him top man. He sold hats, and everything else, to sailors in town for the day. Mr. Average Man, anyone who stopped to window shop, many already sporting head wear were fair game to the salesmen.

 

As years went by we opened our own stores, with special care to the hat department. It was given priority space.  But then Kennedy, in his bare headed glory, destroyed the industry. The country seemed to rally around him, ‘Hats off to Kennedy! The shelves in our store held less and less hats as customers relaxed and could feel the wind thru their hair.

 

The ladies took their cue and doffed theirs making every day elegance go the way of the dodo. Manufacturers, distributors, packaging firms went out of business.

 

Nobody gained except the sun tan lotions companies.