The whys and wherefores of hats in fantasy

I was thinking about hats the other day. Namely how, prior to the 1960s, they were expected outdoor attire for men and women, not just to keep their heads warm and dry in bad weather, but as an expected fashion accessory. The style of hat has changed throughout history, but it seems like various eras (and professions) are associated with specific types of hats.

But nowadays (in the US, at least), they're not part of expected formal attire at all, and hats/head coverings are generally only worn as a form of self-expression (like baseball caps) or personal quirkiness, or sometimes as an expression of one's culture or religion. I remember there was a time when I actually "needed" to wear a hat because I had an autoimmune condition that caused patchy, and for a while, complete hair loss, and people who didn't know often looked at me and asked, "So what's with the hat?"

So what changed? Why would something that was an expected norm throughout most of history (in Western European and US culture, at least) go mostly out of fashion (except for sports team hats) within a few decades? And why did people wear hats in the olden days. To keep their heads warm and dry in the rain? To protect themselves from the sun before sunscreen was invented? But what about wind? Wouldn't that make them inconvenient in bad weather? And why don't we care about keeping our heads dry now? Even when the weather is bad, people are more likely to go for hooded jackets or umbrellas instead of hats (except ski hats maybe).

I ask because this is something that seems to often be overlooked in secondary world fantasy. People tend to have fairly modern attitudes about head coverings in these novels, even when the societies aren't terribly modern, and the only head coverings are hooded cloaks and so on. I think Tolkien's hobbits wore these ghastly little hats, but to be honest, try as I might, I always imagine them in hoods or bare headed. I've even read a lot of fantasy where the characters don't even seem to use helms as part of their battle gear (and honestly, if there were one piece of equipment I wouldn't want to skip, that would be the one).

I've been trying to think about this in my own stories and am reflecting on how my own bias about what's normal makes me cringe at the thought of making my characters wear the kinds of hats people "really" wore in pre-industrial times. It's fantasy, of course. Doesn't have to mirror real life history. But does it make logical sense to have a pre-industrial world where people rarely wear hats?

Sorry, long post. But for those of you who write fantasy set in secondary worlds, are hats and head coverings part of the cultural landscape? Do you think about them or mention them at all as a writer?

Yeah, I've wondered if hats went out of vogue because the widespread availability of showering since the 60s means that most people wash their hair every day, or nearly every day. Men often slicked their hair down and put hats on over, though there was a convention that they were to remove them inside, so hiding their nasty, greasy hair doesn't seem like it could have been a major motivation. And of course, at some times in history, both genders wore wigs, so why would they need to put a hat on over the fake hair they went to such pains to don?

Wealthy women's hats were often part of elaborate coiffures in the olden days, and they were usually pinned in place. As recently as the 50s or 60s, women would sleep with caps or snoods over their hairdos sometimes, so they wouldn't have to redo them from scratch every day.

I suspect that prior to the 20th century, at least, people did spend more time outside, and were more likely to walk or ride on horses or in open carriages (unless really, really rich). Hats with broad brims and bonnets (for women) protected from sunburn. Even today, guys who are balding will often wear ball caps to protect/hide their bald spot (though there was that whole head shaving thing that was popular for a while). And it makes sense that peasants, in particular, would wear utilitarian hats to cover their heads while out in the elements all day, while richer people would possibly wear more elaborate hats as status symbols (their impracticality was actually the whole point).

I've been ruminating on hats and their relevance to class and culture too, and trying to think how they fit into a society. I have a character who comes from a fairly agrarian place where women tend to wear bonnets and men tend to wear broad, floppy-brimmed hats, and it's considered appropriately modest to cover one's head. But he's now living in a place where hats are more optional and people are more likely to wear hooded cloaks when it rains (which it often does there).

But thinking on how realistic this is, given history.

Did the ancient Greeks and Romans wear hats much? They're often depicted bare-headed, but it seems that all the reasons for wearing hats in the middle ages or renaissance would apply back then too.

An interesting thought, because yeah, modern cars have pretty cramped head space. Though did men in the 1950s keep their fedoras on while driving?

But balmy weather didn't stop people from wearing hats in Southern Europe in later eras, and of course, there's still the need to protect oneself from the sun.

I'm just trying to get a sense for how much of pre-industrial Europe's predilection for hats was a cultural quirk and how much was inevitable, given the circumstances.

For that matter, how about non-European cultures in different times and places?

It's something I'm thinking about, because my setting has evolved since I started writing it. Initially, it was just one of those vaguely medieval without really being medieval fantasy settings. Cobbled streets, stone buildings, picturesque taverns, guys dressed like this or this and women either in something similar if of a non traditional bent, or like this, and so on. The way my mind's eye tends to see characters in fantasy novels. But it's evolved into something a little more early modern, but there are some definite cultural differences. It's not Europe, but since the climate is similar, and because I have a fondness for architecture and so on of that bent, I sort of envision the setting to be Northern Europe in the 1600s or thereabouts. But there are definite cultural differences because of a different religious dynamic and because the presence of magic has changed the nature of gender relations somewhat. And it's a world that's more driven by trade and occasional conflict between civilizations, and less by colonialism. So I do have trouble thinking of my characters running around in some of the things people wore then.

I tend to be less lavish with descriptions of clothing and buildings than many fantasy writers, but I want to be able to provide some description and also to sneak a few little details in that illustrate differences between some of my cultures. And it occurred to me at some point that I'd really neglected hats, but that was partially because most fantasy writers seem to.