You know what I mean, right? Visual aid is difficult because this subreddit won’t allow attachments for some strange reason but I put a picture up in this tweet:

https://x.com/AndrewLivingst2/status/1869061368638489034

(In case that doesn’t hotlink, search for the tweet with the text: “Were different hat styles invented in 1930 or what???”)

Were white straw hats just so much the “in” thing that it became utterly ubiquitous for the entire century of 1840-1940? Did people simply not think that men’s headwear counts as fashion? Did Rene Belloq incorporated have a total monopoly on the menswear industry and it took the economic ravages of the Second World War to free all of western civilization from their stranglehold? I mean, what’s going on here???