Hollywood and the Fedora
Fedora hats were made popular by 1930’s and 1940’s movie era in Hollywood by gangsters. A Fedora might shield a man from the sun in his eyes at a bus stop, racetrack, or busy urban sidewalk. The visual drama of the pointed “pinch” at the front of the fedora added to the appeal a man or woman’s face and a sweeping brim was occasioned by a flip up of the crown at the back. The this deeper crown flip was known as a Trilby.
American fashion in cinema and theater features men of every stripe wearing fedora hats of the postwar and earlier Prohibition period. Gangsters of the 1930’s adopted a black felt hat in an era when the black silk hat and wide panama hat and derby reigned in men’s hats. The gangster tradition of wearing a fedora with a tuxedo or black tie ensemble smirked in the face of sartorial tradition.
Men’s suits feature an almost universally broadened set of padded shoulders and boxy silhouette. The curving felt brim of the fedora and its pointed front delivered the coup de grace to a fairly unrelieved look. Classic American costume reveals that a hat in warmer spring and summer might allow omission of a morning or even trenchcoat which might be replace with a topcoat.
