13. The Transformation of Fashion Policing Headgear from Heavy Handed Fun to Widespread Criminality
Nowadays, fashion rules are so slack that sweatpants and hoodies are sometimes acceptable boardroom attire. Not so in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when fashion – especially headgear fashion – was serious business. The end of straw hat season was eventually extended to September 15th, which came to be known as “Felt Hat Day”. A tradition emerged that those who wore straw hats past the cutoff date were liable to have them snatched off their domes and destroyed by friends and acquaintances. It was all in good fun at first. Then it morphed into widespread crime, when strangers began to take the liberty of snatching straw hats off the heads of people with whom they were unacquainted. The results were violence, and eventually, widespread rioting. The rule that men should not wear straw hats after September 15th was enforced, sometimes violently, by the fashion police – or more accurately, the fashion mob.
