We all have moments which, as a common and shared humanity, we experience together. It is in times like this that the world truly feels universal and we have the rare ability to understand each other beyond languages and beyond barriers. I believe we are experiencing a moment like that right now, following the cruel and swift decline of the fedora. The fedora has fallen far, from once being the hat of the greats like Indiana Jones and Frank Sinatra, to a crowd whose members wear zip-up hoodies with their plaid shorts and white crew socks and say “m’lady” 17 times a day. While I understand that this is clearly not all people who wear them, it is this group which has ruined the once-proud everyday attire for all others who need middle-ground headwear.

The real tragedy lies far beyond the loss of a great hat, but in the overarching issue that has now arisen. We have lost our common hat. We have the hats to wear in formal situations whose existence suggests pomp and circumstance and we of course have our casual snapbacks, yet where is our hat for those situations when neither is appropriate? Suppose for a minute that you are dressing for an interview. The idea of wearing a hat probably never crosses your mind, because while it may offer utility, there is no style headwear that would fit the setting. We no longer have our average hat, the hat you can wear with outfits just nice enough to not work with snapbacks but nowhere near nice enough to wear with a top hat.

Furthermore, how do the unfortunate sufferers of bad haircuts or baldness survive such hardships of the days they live in? They have no solace like their brothers and sisters before them who always had a beautifully crafted cover to not simply hide their shame, but even enhance their look. We have a gaping hole missing from our world today and it is time that solutions be sought once again. We have always prevailed before in protecting our heads from the sun, no matter the standard of our dress.

These trying times cannot last, and it is up to the hat-making community to create a new and versatile headwear that will fill the void that the decline of the fedora created. We all know bucket hats nor bowler hats will never do the job that the fedora did before its invasion by the neckbeard community. We have long suffered in this modern era from a world without a hat for occasions where neither a baseball cap nor top hat will do. While it is perhaps more important to be looking at the real issues facing this country and the world, we cannot do so with the sun in our eyes.

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Email Thomas Price at [email protected].