The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-07-10
ENGLISH HATS.
Marked Changes in London of Recent
Years.

Marked Changes in London of Recent
Years.
If the question were asked OF every
wearer of silk hat, IF comfort were
the only question to be considered
would you prefer to wear felt or a SILK
hat?" we do not doubt that, without
exception, the answer would be that
fashion DEGREES that silk hats must be
worn by all men who wish to look
well dressed and the dictates of fashion
must be obeyed, Notwithstanding the
extra comfort gained by wearing
hard or soft felt. While fashion rules
thus, the hat trade benefits all round.
man wearing silk hat when on
business, at social functions, or on sun
day, naturally reverts TO felt hat on
other occasions. AS matters know,
hat suffers almost as much wear by
being exposed to light and dust While
hanging on a peg as when on the wear
er's head 1t follows that all branches
of the trade are helped, and the more
frequently the leaders of fashion de-
sire new shapes in either silks OF felts
the greater will be the turnover OF man
ufacturers and retailers.
Who are the mysterious individuals,
or. rather, who is the mysterious indi-
yidual who DEGREES with what particu-
lar kind of covering long-sutfering hui
manity shall hide the brains we are all
more or less supposed to possess? 1t is
said that the Prince Of Wales, who is
stanch believer in the silk hat, has
considerable hand in the matter. But
whether that be SO or not, the Prince IS
undoubtedly responsible for the stu
impregnable position this article occu-
pies in our wardrobes. According to
London morning paper the silk hat Is
losing ground. with frock coat it Is
de rieueur the world over with all who
make the slightest pretence even OF
knowing what to wear" says the writer
of an article. But in no city, perhaps,
is the doom Of the silk hat more patent
than in London Twenty, nay, ten years
ago, who but vulgar clodhopper would
dare wear bowler in Bond-st. or the
Park? What city man, TO say nothing
of city clerk, would have dreamed OF
going to his office except in the regula-
ton headgear? What fellow from the
country-more especially if he wanted
to be taken for cockney--Would have
come for a few days holiday to London
without his silk hat? The shape. or
style or cut did not matter. To his UNI
practiced eye he saw no difference; the
fact that he had silk hat on was more
! than sufficient for him. But all that
has changed. The silk hat is fast losing
it's hold in other parts of London, as it
| did many wears ago in Fleet-St.-the
one great thorougfare where headgear
| is of no account; where even poetical
species of hat is affected by some, a
| yeritable sombrero of sunny Seville,
! which for some unfathOmable reason
Londoners speak of as 'sombrero hat
as though eombrero itself meant some.
| thing else.
| But in spite of all this the silk hat still
| goes long way to mark a man. The
| silk hat of the swell-the man about
town--is not the silk hat of the city
| merchant: we have a cabinet miniser' S
silk hat, a clerical elk hat, cabman'
| silk hat, journalistic silk hat, law
| yer's silk hat, and many more. There
/ they all are, proclaiming loudly to some
extent by their condition, but more
often by their shape, to what class of
person they belong THE Halter S
| Gezette.