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Riots and Civil Unrest that Shook History

Khalid Elhassan January 13, 2021 33 min

Astor Opera House - Astor Place Riot — Authorities putting down the Shakespeare rioters. New York Public Library

5. The ‘Fashion Mobs’ escalate to public bullying

Straw hats used to be super popular. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not

Today, the rules of fashion are not taken anywhere nearly as seriously as they were in the past. Indeed, modern fashion rules are so slack that even sweatpants and hoodies can be treated as acceptable boardroom attire. Things were different in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when fashion – especially headgear fashion – was serious business. Rigorous rules against men wearing straw hats after September 15^th meant that those who defied that bit of convention ran afoul of the fashion police – or more accurately, the fashion mob.

A man wearing a straw hat after September 15^th was fair game for anybody on the street who wanted to snatch it off his dome and stomp it to smithereens. Many went along, good-naturedly. Some, however, treated having their private property seized and destroyed by strangers more seriously; it was a crime. Resistance did not end the practice, though. It only led the fashion police to gather in mobs for mutual protection – or mutual bullying – and get more violent.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.