I'm surprised at the lack of discussion around the correlation between the decline of the hat and conformity and formality of appearance in general.
Prior to the 1950s, most men dressed in a uniform fashion. Your appearance might vary depending on your class, but within social classes, one man looked pretty much the same as the next. A neatly trimmed haircut and a suit were standard everyday wear, and a hat to go with it.
After WWII, the 1950s saw the invention of the teenager. Youth culture was more prominent than ever before, thanks to many factors, both social and technological. As those teenagers entered the workforce, they were filled with new ideas about individuality and style. Along with the Baby Boomers ideas about style also came changing ideas about hats.
The change didn't come overnight, of course, but by the time JFK became president in 1961, you could see a definite trend away from hats and suits and every man's hair cut well above the collar. It would take another decade or more for hats to really fade out, more or less along with the decline of suits in general.
Watch for the crowd scenes in Manhattan at the beginning. You'll see a lot of hats, just not as many as you would have seen on the street ten years earlier, but far more than you'd see in a crowd scene from the same area in 1977.
There was no single cause for the decline in men's hats, and it didn't happen all at once. Stories like "it was Ike with the interstates" are appealing and make good cocktail party conversation (although I suppose the cocktail party died along with the hat, now that I think of it), but reality is usually not that discreet and simple.
Clothing used to be really expensive. Studies of retail pricing indicate that, after correcting for inflation, a good pair of workmans' trousers -- jeans, in other words -- would have cost the equivalent of roughly $400 in 2001 dollars in 1901. A reasonable quality man's suit would have cost the equivalent of $2-3000. Clothing (and food) accounted for a much higher percentage of household budgets than they do today. Women's attire was similarly expensive. Prior to the 20th century, poorer working people had to make do with second and third hand garments and patch them until they fell apart; even in the 20th century, being able to afford new clothing on an annual basis was seen as a luxury.
There are a couple of corollaries of this. One is that fashions were far more conventional, than they are today -- you didn't want to pay the equivalent of a modern automobile's price for an outfit that would be seen as weird or outlandish within 1-2 years. Another is that they were much slower to change because people needed to get their full value out of such an expensive asset.
In fact, if you look at automotive fashion today, you see much the same constraints. Cars are expensive enough that sensible people don't generally change their vehicle every year; they get some miles out of them, and they tend to buy vehicles on the basis of perceived utility. Which is why the boring silver saloon or SUV is more common than the bright pink, retro-styled sports convertible, or the monster truck with jacked-up suspension and six foot diameter tires.
See also, for example, the financial City of London, where the "uniform" was a pinstripe suit with a bowler hat, umbrella and buttonhole.
This uniform only started to die during the 70s, and was pretty much killed by 80s excess. (Although Lock & Co still sell around 5000 bowler hats each year mostly to city workers.)
They're not altogether useless. They keep the sun off your face and neck, which can be very useful in some climates. In Australia, where I live, a hat is now a compulsory part of every school child's uniform, and they are expected to be worn in the playground, because we have very high rates of skin cancer here. I don't know if that will translate into adult fashion or not. It might be too early to tell.
I suspect watches may diminish but will always be around because they signal status in a way that hats don't.
It's not (only) a symbol of wealth. Within limits, any reasonably classy watch will do. But wearing one is self-selecting into a certain group - someone who cares about the details, cares about time, wants to make a good impression.
I don't want to overstate the point, but I definitely notice a nice timepiece, just like I notice well cut clothes, cufflinks, good shoes, neat hair, an elegant piece of jewellery, any number of things people can do to make an effort. It's signalling, and it does make a difference, for better or worse.
Ah yes, the old "the suit is dying" clarion call that everyone hears once every few years.
But suits will never die, and neither will ties. They, frankly, make men look better. A suit that fits well makes a man look slimmer, taller and more broader-shouldered. It accentuates his chest. It hides fat and bad composure in ways that T-shirts and polos never can. Ties also make you look taller, and add fantastic unity to the collar.
The main reason hats are dead, still, is because there's no gray area for them to come back. Fashion cycles: you have wider ties, then skinnier ties, then wider ties again. But if you stop wearing an accessory completely, it's harder to bring it back. Say, for a second, that no one wore two-piece suits. But people would still wear oxford cloth shirts, khakis, and blazers, which is only a few hops away from a suit. You can wear varying degrees of formal wear, but there are two options for hats: wearing one, or not wearing one. Which means that the man who wears one suddenly finds himself in a start minority...unlike someone who wears a suit in a room full of khakis and oxfords, which is slightly different, but not THAT different.
I doubt watches will ever disappear. First of all, they're effectively the only piece of "jewellery" that men can legitimately wear in many situations. And, secondly, they tend to be a lot more efficient for knowing the time than a mobile, as you don't have to pull it out of your pocket and then (often) push a button to turn the screen on (not to mention problems with sunlight).
> Watches? I am not wearing any since I started to carry phones.
Watches get secluded from utilitarian+jewelry to purely jewelry. Rolex sounds like Dior, Prada or Louis Vuitton. Swatch on the other hand struggles in the lower segment (but they're pivoting into jewelry and higher end more and more). For youngsters, the cheap McGyver watch is dead, while Rolex still make (some) people dream.
Funny you should say that. I'm currently working on a browser-based game where one has a choice of hairstyles and hats for one's avatar. Getting those two to play together caused us quite a few (heh) headaches, and required additional complexity to deal with.
As I recall, one got more headroom in the cars of that day. (Even if you weren't, like me, a little kid.)
An interesting point about the uniform fashion. A few years ago, The Washington Post Sunday magazine carried an article about the civil-rights era riots in Cambridge, Maryland, ca. 1965. Everyone was dressed alike--the local men and the out-of-town students, all wore white shirts, dark trousers, and leather shoes.
Prior to the 1950s, most men dressed in a uniform fashion. Your appearance might vary depending on your class, but within social classes, one man looked pretty much the same as the next. A neatly trimmed haircut and a suit were standard everyday wear, and a hat to go with it.
After WWII, the 1950s saw the invention of the teenager. Youth culture was more prominent than ever before, thanks to many factors, both social and technological. As those teenagers entered the workforce, they were filled with new ideas about individuality and style. Along with the Baby Boomers ideas about style also came changing ideas about hats.
The change didn't come overnight, of course, but by the time JFK became president in 1961, you could see a definite trend away from hats and suits and every man's hair cut well above the collar. It would take another decade or more for hats to really fade out, more or less along with the decline of suits in general.
Take a look at this film from 1967, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJgaaAfhR5I
Watch for the crowd scenes in Manhattan at the beginning. You'll see a lot of hats, just not as many as you would have seen on the street ten years earlier, but far more than you'd see in a crowd scene from the same area in 1977.
There was no single cause for the decline in men's hats, and it didn't happen all at once. Stories like "it was Ike with the interstates" are appealing and make good cocktail party conversation (although I suppose the cocktail party died along with the hat, now that I think of it), but reality is usually not that discreet and simple.