I wish hats would come back like in the video. Almost everybody wore a hat in 1927.
I bought a hat a few weeks back. It's so great to wear, it's safe and warm.
However, everybody looks at me as if I am some crazed hipster with my "fedora". If everybody would wear a hat like in the video, life would be so much nicer.
I don't think people liked hats back then. There was a specific season in the early 1960s where most American men wore hats before that season and after that season almost none did. Tipping point dynamics indicate most wearers strongly wanted to stop wearing hats but couldn't for social pressure, until a tipping point hit and instantly almost everyone stopped, permanently.
"nicer" is debatable, but it certainly was expensive and annoying. I'm hoping the necktie and business suit experience the same collapse.
Deserved or not, fedoras and similar hats have become associated with hipsters today. The public at large generally does not like to deal with hipsters, for a variety of reasons (their typical attitude is a big one).
It's really no different than how many people distrust others who wear extremely baggy clothing. Clothing like that has become, rightly or wrongly, associated with gang culture. Most everyday people do not want to deal with others who dress in such a way.
Had fedoras become associated with a more respected culture or group of people today, then they very well could have become more popular.
Personally when I think of the kind of dude who wears a fedora I think of a husky ("big boned") pale white guy with a lot of opinions about My Little Pony and / or men's rights.
Honest question: how do hipsters behave? Wthey have appeared in mass just the last year here in Spain(just very unusual before ). So I've had no oportunity to interact with them (just with some friends that are in a rock group, they have to keep an "attitude", but I think is mostly to keep the artist behaviour that people expect)
The hipster attitude I've experienced (and not all the ones I've known behave this way, but it's typical) is a contempt for anything "mainstream". Their coolness lies in the fact that they have secrets, like their "favorite" artist that no one else knows about (and therefore, no one is as cool as them).
It manifests in a holier-than-thou, I'm better than you because you're not cool, you're part of the unwashed masses that just don't know any better.
It's a counterculture sub-culture that's built on the physical manifestation of low-grade oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) (as opposed to the punk movement which would be a high-grade ODD sub-culture and for which there is lots of cross pollination). It's almost entirely centered around having secret or obscure knowledge from the mainstream which they purposely conflate with "taste" and how those tastes makes them special snowflakes.
Groups of hipsters will "share secrets", which they think keeps that taste special and unique, until some perceived critical mass adopts those same tastes (it makes no different if it comes from within the sub-culture or is coincidentally adopted from without), then they think it dilutes the special uniqueness of those things.
Oftentimes, hipsters will purposely cling onto tastes that might be described as anti-tastes for the purpose of optimizing the search for obscurity - they know the majority of people won't like it if they were exposed to it, therefore it's automatically obscure. This hack also works for producers of hipster geared content, make something tasteless and hipsters are likely to gravitate towards it because of the perceived obscurity.
Tastelessness is not always a hallmark of hipsterism, and is sometimes confused for it. Hipsters rely on obscurity before tastleness. Sometimes virtuoso skills in certain trades of skill sets are also obscure enough, and defiant enough of mainstream tastes, that hipsters may adopt and perfect those skills. For example, ultra high-end foods, in very specific categories, are a hipster staple.
What do normal people care or not care about? Viewing the normal masses as an oppressive authority, their ODD will compel them to adopt the opposite. e.g.
- Normal people don't care where their ketchup is made? Hipsters will hand make ketchup from locally grown organic ingredients of the highest possible quality.
- Normal people want music with a beat and a catchy tune? Hipsters will find music genres composed of random, unmemorable noise.
- Normal people want clothes that fit and go well together? Hipsters will find clothes that don't fit and don't go well together.
etc.
The psychology of special uniqueness gives many hipsters a feeling of power or dominion over other people and can give them an attitude of aloof standoffishness, a "I'm better than you because of the rare things I know about". It can appear a bit like the attitude of "cool". It's also important that the secret knowledge they have is generally not about anything of actual importance. Hipsters won't gravitate towards obscure fields of intellectual study in general -- unless mainstream society expected them not to, then ODD would compel them to.
Hipsters are different from "cool" in that "cool" usually means adoption and mastery of a culture confirming sub-culture and the styles associated with that sub-culture. While hipsterism is focused on adoption and mastery of obscurity.
In some ways, hipsterism is also confused in some cases with nerd culture (and there are some overlaps), except nerd culture cares about topics which lend themselves to obsessive pedant-ism and escapist fiction and may coincidentally appear out-of-the mainstream in similar ways to hipsterism. I'd say it's more likely that hipsterism purposely adopts the appearances of nerdism in some cases because of the obscure non-mainstream guarantees of nerdism (which is often a manifestation of OCD, SPD and ASD, but not ODD).
Obscurity, in the hipster subculture, is also local, rather than global -- which is partially what makes it hard to define. Does the hipster live in a highly urban environment? Then they might adopt rural clothing and fashion tastes. Do they live in a rural environment? Then they might adopt urban wear. Combined with the large long tail of obscurity available to the modern consumer, they have near infinite things to adopt and consume.
Most vexing, hipsterism has difficulty describing itself. It uses words like "authentic" or "rare", but is largely not introspective. A hipster that might care deeply about the authenticity of the 4 pieces 1950s 3-piece jazz band they belong to, cares nothing about the authenticity of the lens-less glasses frames he's wearing. You can bet, however, that his band is the only 1950s 3-piece jazz band in his immediate area. It's the obscurity of the items, the social references, and the assurance that it is not accepted by the authority of the mainstream, to satisfy the ODD urges, that he actually cares about.
Hipsters, in many cases even profess a dislike for each other, possibly because hipsterism takes skill. Anything that takes skill means that somebody can become an authority in it, triggering an ODD reflex against that person. The stereotypical hipster argument of who likes the more obscure band is merely a reflection of this phenomenon.
Fedoras haven't been trendy among anyone but neckbeards for the last 3 years. Wearing a fedora identifies you as being essentially socially and stylistically oblivious.
It's been obvious for decades (centuries?), but it really is true that engineers are disproportionately befuddled by contemporary fashion and style.
how is the fit? it seems a lot of people are trying to look fashionable by wearing a fedora without even considering its fit and size.
and further, does it go with the rest of your outfit? most everyday/streetwear would look awful with a fancy hat. If you'll notice in the video, most people are wearing proper coats or suits.
I am a boring dresser because I visit many clients. A nice button down shirt, a black jacket, none-casual-pants. People say the hat goes really well with it.
Current slang aside, an ‘Indiana Jones’ (front-pinched snap-brim fur felt dome hat) is a fedora, and a hipster ‘fedora’ (cloth panel tapered bucket) isn't. It's like calling Crocs ‘Monkstraps’ because they buckle on the feet.
I bought a hat a few weeks back. It's so great to wear, it's safe and warm.
However, everybody looks at me as if I am some crazed hipster with my "fedora". If everybody would wear a hat like in the video, life would be so much nicer.