# When and why did Homburgs go out of fashion?



## Brian G Turner

Something that has bugged me recently - why did the Hombergs of the 1920's go out of fashion?

 Perhaps more to the point: at what point - and why - did men stop wearing hats with their suits? 

 Or is it still a fashion somewhere in America?


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## littlemissattitude

I said:
			
		

> Or is it still a fashion somewhere in America?


Not that I know of.  Most of the men I see wearing hats (besides baseball caps, which don't count) are much older gentlemen who can remember when wearing hats _was_ still in style.

As to when hats went out of style, I think it was probably sometime in the 1950s.  Certainly, I don't remember seeing it done very much in the sixties.  As I said, baseball caps don't count, and cowboy hats - which are still very popular in some circles - are a whole other story.

I actually kind of wish that hats for men would come back in style; I think they're neat.


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## Brian G Turner

I like them, too!


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## Esioul

What are homburgs?

I love hats: I have a straw one and a purple velvet one and a red beret and I have loads of bandanas...


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## Brian G Turner

Think 1920s hats.


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## Esioul

I just looked them up in goodle- um, my dad has a hat like that- I brought it for him a few years ago!


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## erickad71

I like those also.
Definitely not a fashion I've seen anywhere except in old movies.


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## Brian G Turner

Let's revive it! I have an original from my grandad on a shelf nearby. 

 Should I start wearing it to business meetings?

 Hm...maybe I need to ensure that I have a matching suit first?


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## zachariah

By the powers of Necromancy, I command this thread to rise again! LIIIIIVE!

I just found this collection of pictures from old New York and wondered the same question. Are you still there Brian? Are you still wearing your hat?

I too have a weird desire to try and bring back hats. I'm buying a fedora.


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## Pyan

Umm...Brian is Admin, Owner and the Boss, Zachariah...

Though if he ever started wearing a homburg, that I don't know.


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## zachariah

Well, colour me socially inept! 

The only real hat I have now is this, passed down to me from my Grandfather. I yearn to wear it, but the weather conditions are never quite right.


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## Happy Joe

Many folks who spend a great deal of time in the outdoors still wear wide brimmed hats here in the western US (think cowboy hats, although I favor a crushable wide brim cloth hat when in the mountains/deserts).  Many country folks (and wannabees) also wear hats (Stetson is still in business).
Locally you can still get a felt hat steamed and styled.
Yes; hats are still worn by real people; although I haven't seen a homburg in a long time (fedoras were popular into the 1950s).

Enjoy!


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## Urien

Ode to hats... in summer I can be seen occasionally wearing a Panama hat; unfortunately it's often windy in Cumbria hence it'll be replaced by the more secure baseball or Tilley hat. Or up in the mountains warmer thermal hats.
My dad and grandad being good Yorkshire chaps would frequently wear flat caps; indeed my dad still does on his walk to get the morning paper. I can't bring myself to do that quite yet.
On the last trip to my parents I looked at old photos of family from the 1930s; the flat caps they were wearing were the size of dustbin lids and looked absurd, like the 'ecky thump episode of the Goodies. 

Meanwhile Homburgs died out through an excess of interbreeding. The gene pool narrowed to an unsustainable extent. When the next hat band pandemic struck... 'twas the end for the Homburg and their unique cry... "Waarrrk waarrrk" sometimes you can hear it in the background of silent movies from the 1850s.


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## HoopyFrood

I love hats and I think they should definitely be worn more. I'm quite the fan of the trilby -- I have a couple and through winter I wear them a lot. I'm all for a homburg, or just hat-related, revolution sometime soon. Viva la hats! 

Top hat - now _there's_ a hat I want to wear more.


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## AE35Unit

I'm like to wear a hat other than a baseball cap,something like Terry Pratchett's trademark hat, but my other half thinks I'd look a t*t.


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## The Judge

Urien said:


> On the last trip to my parents I looked at old photos of family from the 1930s; the flat caps they were wearing were the size of dustbin lids and looked absurd, like the 'ecky thump episode of the Goodies.



I've got a photo of my grandfather on a building site in the 1940s or possibly early 1950s and he's wearing a brimmed hat, not quite as sharp as a fedora but that kind of feel - and he was just a brickie's mate, not the foreman or anything!  But the fashion was obviously on its way out even then - he's the oldest man in the photo and from memory, I don't think any of the other men are wearing hats of any kind.  And in none of the photos of my Dad as a young man is he wearing a hat, except when he's in his Royal Marine's uniform.

J


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## AE35Unit

Well i just had a dig on the Wiki and it seems they have gone in and out of fashion since the 20s! Gangsters wore them in the Godfather, Procul Harum wrote a song about one in the 60s,even rap artists in the 90s wore them!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homburg_(hat)
I prefer the Fedora which is less rigid and I think the hat that Indiana Jones wore.


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## AE35Unit

Me want one of these!
Indiana Jones "Indy" - Wool Felt Safari: Hatsinthebelfry.com


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## Ursa major

I was wearing a Panama only last Wednesday afternoon, eating outside at a café near the beach. My head would've gone rather red without the hat.



I very much doubt that I looked at all fashionable, which seems to be the driver for many (most?) people's clothing decisions these days.


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## Pyan

I wear a straw Panama in summer when I'm at work, and a Thinsulate hat if it's really cold in winter - but apart from that, I prefer not to wear any hat...


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## AE35Unit

pyan said:


> I wear a straw Panama in summer when I'm at work, and a Thinsulate hat if it's really cold in winter - but apart from that, I prefer not to wear any hat...



Well I'd imagine a giant squid would look strange wearing a hat wouldn't it ?


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## Urien

I used to wear a squid as a hat whilst touring the Greek islands in an 1870s cabaret re-enactment encounter group.

Alas the local fishermen tried to eat it, I had horrible cyclopean dreams of vast impossible structures deep under the sea and the squid didn't like my shampoo so left me for a passing Albanian supermodel.

But sometimes out in deep water I have seen far below what looks like a gigantic fedora, powered by arms too innumerable and strange to be of this existence... Pyan, was that you???


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## Pyan

Might very well have been, Urien - in my alter-ego as Indipyan Jones, possibly...


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## Urien

^Tres bien. I wonder do you have a squid avatar for all occasions?

What about... Great Old Ones go to a James Bond evening?

I am rather taken with the fedora... now it's just a question of how self-conscious I am prepared to be in public.


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## AE35Unit

Lol Pyan,veery good! 
Did you know that Harrison Ford actually went looking for the right hat during the preparartions for filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark? He knew that most hats from the 20s were out of fashion in the 80s but managed to track down an Indy hat. He actually went looking for an Indy hat! And found a Fedora! If only they could be brought back into fashion so I could wear one without being laughed at. Lets get rid of the baseball cap!


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## HoopyFrood

Dudes, who cares about fashion and what other people think? People on the street see you for about three seconds and then you'll probably never see them again (and your family will just disown you, but it's only because they can't handle your awesome hat power). Embrace the hats, people! 

Plus hats are practical. Wear a hat in bright sun, protect your head! 

Also good for keeping the rain off your head. 

And for generally looking shifty and a little bit mysterious...


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## Ursa major

Don't worry, Hoopy.

Sun willing, I'll be wearing my Panama this Wednesday.


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## AE35Unit

I want to try a Fedora on now! Can get a new Indy hat for 40 dollars! My other half would think i'd lost the plot tho!


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## Pyan

Urien said:


> ^Tres bien. I wonder do you have a squid avatar for all occasions?
> 
> What about... Great Old Ones go to a James Bond evening?



Just about...


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## SpaceShip

I have quite a few hats but apart from a few wispy feathery thingies for weddings and the like they are mostly winter hats to keep out all that cold.

But looking up some very old pictures and having a bit of a read up, it seems that everyone wore hats up to about fifty years ago and the type of hats denoted the class or business of the wearer, from cloth caps up to top hats and mob caps to huge brimmed feathery concoctions. I can remember when I first went to work in the City of London in the '60s that almost all businessmen wore bowler hats. On looking out of the window down to the street, looked like a load of moles walking along and, of course, they all had a walking-stick type brolly and a newspaper. Funny, not thought about that for years!

I suppose the nearest we get to a type of class headgear these days is the baseball cap - wonder if any of the wearers play the game itself! Hmm.


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## Urien

Pyan,

Q could not have done better. 

Spaceship, I think it did denote class, oddly the upper class and working class would both wear flat caps (especially in the country). 

I think the car replaced the hat, (I often walk around with a Toyota Landcruiser on my head), by that I mean the necessity to walk has massively diminished. Hats once divorced from necessity are bulky, need storing and not forgetting... I guess in the terms of an old economist their marginal utility has diminished. Whereas baseball caps have gained utility in that they are light, storable, (vaguely sporty) and serve the "working in the garden" "off to the park with the kids" functionality, oh and they stay on fairly easily and resist the wind.

Ah an early morning treatise on hats... who could resist.


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## AE35Unit

Urien said:


> .
> 
> , oh and they stay on fairly easily and resist the wind.
> 
> .



Well mine blew off the other day,complete with Flying Scotsman badge. Had to go rescue it!


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## Urien

Ah... but if that had been a Homburg it would have blown all the way to China before you could get it back. Prototype aircraft in WW1 were often Homburg shaped, a little known fact.


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## AE35Unit

Urien said:


> Ah... but if that had been a Homburg it would have blown all the way to China before you could get it back. Prototype aircraft in WW1 were often Homburg shaped, a little known fact.



Yea and thats what concerns me about getting a Fedora. Its really windy up here!


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## SpaceShip

Well you could do what the southern ladies in the US did in the seventeenth century - you could start a new male trend with possibly blue ribbon holding it down and tied in a jaunty bow under one ear.  Loverly!


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## AE35Unit

SpaceShip said:


> Well you could do what the southern ladies in the US did in the seventeenth century - you could start a new male trend with possibly blue ribbon holding it down and tied in a jaunty bow under one ear.  Loverly!



 Oh yea i can just imagine the look on Helen's face if I turned up looking like that!


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## Urlik

you could always use a length of "flesh coloured" elastic to make an invisible chin strap


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## AE35Unit

Or attach lead weights to the brim where it meets the crown!


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## SpaceShip

Or you could reshape your head - a bit like an anvil - so that the hat has to be pulled over that protuberance and then it couldn't possibly fly off - might have to be surgically removed at some time or other but that's a different story!


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## AE35Unit

You know you can get a crocodile dundee hat from australia with real croc teeth stitched into the brim! Taken from farmed crocs and your for about $400! Strewth as they say!


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## wintermute

I said:


> Something that has bugged me recently - why did the Hombergs of the 1920's go out of fashion?
> 
> Perhaps more to the point: at what point - and why - did men stop wearing hats with their suits?
> 
> Or is it still a fashion somewhere in America?



I dont know about America (cos Im English), but it certainly isnt fashionable here, which is tragic. Id love to wear a homburg, or possibly a fedora. If I had more guts I think Id attempt to singlehandedly bring them back, but alas I suspect I would be hecked and derided from every corner whenever I went out and frankly, who needs that.


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## J-WO

'_There is no sadder sight than that,

of an Englishman in a baseball cap._'


-The Libertines.

(Never really liked the band, but I agree with the sentiment.)


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## blacknorth

Here in Ireland, hats were still common until the 1960s when the baby-boomer generation came to adulthood - after that it seems that hair-styles became a better way of expressing oneself than wearing a hat that denoted ones' social class.

Dispense with identity poliltics - bring back class warfare, and we can have our hats back.


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