JJHAT CENTER IN NEW YORK CITY GETS AN APPROVING NOD FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

Alexia Webster, a New York Times reporter, recently did a wonderful feature story on the venerable hat institution (and retailer) JJ Hat Center on Fifth Avenue in NYC.

Not only did it revere this grand retail space (which is a prized possession, considering the way they tear down historic buildings in NYC), but it gave a bit of history on hat wearing.

“MY grandmother Thalia Callinicos, an immigrant from the Greek island of Ithaca, told me that to the island’s mostly poor villagers, to wear a hat meant that you had arrived. Men returning from their travels to the United States, where they had gone to seek their fortunes, returned sporting brand-new hats, tilted at a fashionable angle. To woo a bride, a hat was indispensable,” said Webster.

I also found it interesting that Webster’s take on current hat wearing is partly due to nostalgia. “Part of the appeal of hats today is the nostalgia they evoke for a vanished era, a time when gentlemen tipped their hats to strangers, tossed them in celebration, or waved them as ships left the docks on long voyages to faraway lands.”

I am not sure about the nostalgia concept, but I am sure hats are coming back (and I am sure you do too). Young people are tired of cookie-cutter lives, boredom and conformity. They want to stand out and be heard above the current social rubble. And what better way to do that than with a hat?

We have to thank young rappers and hip hop artists who have championed hats for the past five years. They like hats (perhaps for the same reason I do – bad hair days) and they are not afraid to wear them.

It goes without saying that the English are tuned into headwear with equal fervor. They revere their hats like we revere our GPS systems; McMansions and SUV’s (count me out of that fixation).

Since this article is so compelling, we thought we would run it for you in its entirety. There were great photos as well.

Enjoy.

“It was the romance of hats that drew me to JJ Hat Center on Fifth Avenue near 32nd Street, which calls itself the city's oldest and largest hat store, with more than 10,000 hats in stock at any time,” said ALEXIA WEBSTER

THE CITY VISIBLE
The Hatters
By ALEXIA WEBSTER
Published: March 2, 2008

MY grandmother Thalia Callinicos, an immigrant from the Greek island of Ithaca, told me that to the island’s mostly poor villagers, to wear a hat meant that you had arrived. Men returning from their travels to the United States, where they had gone to seek their fortunes, returned sporting brand-new hats, tilted at a fashionable angle. To woo a bride, a hat was indispensable.

When my great-grandfather married my great-grandmother, he presented her with a hat. She wore it to every formal occasion, especially on trips to Athens, until it became so shabby that my grandmother and her sister played dress-up with it. Finally, the cat gave birth in the hat, which served as a cradle to a litter of kittens.

Part of the appeal of hats today is the nostalgia they evoke for a vanished era, a time when gentlemen tipped their hats to strangers, tossed them in celebration, or waved them as ships left the docks on long voyages to faraway lands.

It was the romance of hats that drew me to JJ Hat Center on Fifth Avenue near 32nd Street, which calls itself the city’s oldest and largest hat store, with more than 10,000 hats in stock at any time.

JJ was established in 1911, during the heyday of the American hat industry. Although it has changed owners a few times, the shop still feels as if it could belong to the early 20th century.

Today, apart from the thriving hat business among the Hasidic Jewish community, fewer than a dozen men’s hat shops remain in the city, estimates Marc Williamson, who has managed JJ for 20 years.

It’s a far cry from the days when New York had hundreds of hat stores, during an era when it was seen as improper for a man to leave the house without a hat. Hats were so important that laws were enforced on when and where to wear them. If you look at old photographs of crowds of people in New York around the turn of the 20th century, you would be hard pressed to spot a bareheaded man.

When I asked Mr. Williamson why hats had disappeared, he said what local hatters have said for decades: President Kennedy, who broke from tradition and delivered his inaugural address hatless.

In “Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora, and the History of an American Style,” Neil Steinberg takes issue with this theory. He argues that hats began losing popularity long before Kennedy, that “by the mid-1920s, hatlessness was a major problem for the industry, which was in free fall by the late 1940s and early 1950s.”

In fact, Kennedy was not the first president to go without a hat; Franklin Roosevelt spoke at his 1945 inauguration without a hat.

The problem, Mr. Steinberg suggests, is that American society was changing “from a network of men so concerned with acceptability and conformity that they’d all wear the identical object on their heads, to an atomized world where individuals revel in their uniqueness and fiercely protect their right to do whatever they please.”

Or as José Henriquez, a salesman at JJ for 12 years says of that era, “Kids didn’t want to dress like ‘the Man,’ and ‘the Man’ wore hats.”

Mr. Henriquez says that JJ’s customers vary widely. “There are the older gentlemen that come to the store that have always worn hats,” he said, “and on the other end are the young cats that wear hats as a fashion statement. At the moment, the stingy brim hat is popular among the younger guys.”

In fact, Kennedy was not the first president to go without a hat; Franklin Roosevelt spoke at his 1945 inauguration without a hat. The problem, Mr. Steinberg suggests, is that American society was changing "from a network of men so concerned with acceptability and conformity that they'd all wear the identical objects on their heads, to an atomized world where individuals revel in their uniqueness and fiercely protect their right to do whatever they please.

Mr. Henriques says of that era, "Kids didn't want to dress like 'the Man' and 'the Man' wore hats." Customers at JJ's vary widely and include men who have always worn hats and younger customers looking to make a fashion statement.