Up until just after World War II, a gentleman was not considered properly dressed without a hat. Then the hat went the way of the dodo. An often repeated canard attributes the change to President Kennedy and his rarely covered head.

But the real blame probably belongs to automobiles. Hats were knocked off when you entered a car or went into orbit when you lowered the top to a convertible.

In 1940, there were 180 independent major hat makers in the United States. Today there are 10.

Then came the recent men’s-wear shows in Paris and Milan . At the Armani and Emporio Armani shows, the designer’s favored slouchy berets were replaced with a modernized trilby: duotone, high-crowned and often with a pert midsize brim. At Etro, the hats had crowns so high they lent the models a resemblance to Rastafarians or coneheads.

“The stigma of looking like your father, or even your grandfather, if you wear a hat is gone,” said Don Rongione, the president of the Bollman Hat Company of Pennsylvania.

At Dsquared, a latent Sergio Leone theme was suggested by the designer twins Dean and Dan Caten’s deployment of broad-brimmed Stetsons in requisite bad-guy black. At Dai Fujiwara’s show for Issey Miyake, the cocked hats with their midsize brims were pure James Cagney, while at Massimiliano Giornetti’s show for Ferragamo the slouch-brimmed Borsalinos in muted jewel tones seemed like a loving homage to George Raft, the American actor known for playing gangsters.

“Filmmakers have always understood the power of the hat,” said Elisa Fulco, the curator of the Borsalino Foundation, which is sponsoring a show in Milan demonstrating cinema’s love affair with headwear.

Having exhausted the usual narratives of power and gender as expressed through clothing, designers may have merely been casting about for new tools and communally fell upon the hat.

To her show of subdued knits , Angela Missoni added flowerpot hats with brims pulled low over the models’ faces . For Thom Browne’s show, a single hat became the signifying design gesture: flat-crowned, the color of nutmeg, the modified boater made from feathers was a testament to Mr. Browne’s affection for the fast-disappearing skills of artisans everywhere .

Nevertheless, “ a regular guy could actually pull off some of these hats, as opposed to something no one in his right mind would wear out of the house,” Mr. Rongione said.

But the best hats came at the Paris shows of Dior Homme and Lanvin. While Kris Van Assche, the Dior Homme designer, favored handsome but austere flat-brimmed hats right out of “Witness,” Lucas Ossendrijver, who designs men’s clothes for Lanvin, seemed to have fallen in love with the way a broad-brimmed Borsalino with a suggestively pinched crown instantly sexualized an ordinary suit.

“Hats are different from other articles of clothing because they are so close to your face; they create a strange link between your appearance and your interiority,” Ms. Fulco said. “Each time you put on a hat, you create an entirely different story.”


GUY TREBAY
ESSAY