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Wearing white after Labor Day is a well known and outdated end-of-summer style faux pas, but in the 1920s, if you were a man sporting a straw hat in New York City come mid-September, then a bout of public humiliation was probably the best you could hope for. Theft, violence, and even death all resulted from this seasonal wardrobe switch, and the New York Times reported that a “mob of 1,000” took part in the Straw Hat Riots of 1922. Riots that began because of hats.
Seasons dictate what we wear and retailers control when items are available for purchase; this remains the case now, as it did one hundred years ago. Straw-hat season didn’t have an official start date, but retailers could be and were admonished if they sold them too far in advance. In April 1923, The National Association of Straw Hat Monufacturers [sic] launched a campaign to stop merchants from selling their warm-weather stock too early, claiming it was “poor policy to do it ahead of season.” But the switch from summer to fall hat attire was even more clearly defined and inflexible: September 15th was known as Felt Hat Day.
Lasting for three days, the September riots of 1922 started on the 13th and reached from the Battery to the Bronx. “Gangs of young hoodlums” armed with sticks — some with nails on the tip to hook hats off heads — turned the street into a gauntlet strewn with the remnants of boaters, as they were “smashing unseasonable straw hats, and trampling them in the street.” The New York Times’s use of the word “unseasonable” makes these youths sound like arbiters of fashion. Hey, they were just trying to enforce style etiquette.
Conformity influenced what hat men wore when, and it also led to the pack-like mentality of what the New York Tribune referred to as a “straw hat smashing orgy.” Those having their hats destroyed fought back, and resistance led to beatings, which in turn spiraled even further. Style etiquette put forth the September 15th cut-off date, offering up an arbitrary excuse for mischief-making. Ah, the follies of youth.
After hundreds of hats were ruined, Magistrate Hatting — and I swear I’m not making this name up — after showing some leniency, offered a stern warning to those committing these crimes, saying: “I'll send the next one to jail. I intend to see that citizens are protected in their property.” Hatting did not care for style rules or delinquency, and said that a “man has the right to wear a straw hat in a snowstorm.” Even if it isn’t very practical.
Setting a specific end date for straw hats encouraged a felt hat purchase — even if mid-September was still rather warm. Although attitudes were starting to change, wearing a hat was considered the norm in the 1920s; you were more of a sartorial outlier if you went hatless or opted for something out of season. If you did the latter, the consequences could be rather dire — even after the riots of 1922, as one unidentified man found out on September 13th, 1924.
What the New York Times referred to as a “Straw Hat Prank” saw a stolen hat turn into a brawl, which resulted in the victim hitting his head on the curb and dying as a result of his injuries. The article opens with a brief explanation of this tradition — a tradition that had sparked riots just two years prior — pointing to it as the “sport of youngster” and explaining how they “try each September to rid all heads of straw hats” before detailing the tragic incident. Again, these assaults use a style etiquette rule as an excuse for hat-snatching shenanigans with some pretty serious consequences.
It wasn’t all involuntary or violent when it came to the end of straw-hat season, and a sporting environment provided plenty of excuses to toss that old boater away. Chicago Cubs fans marked their first win in September with collective straw-hat destruction, because who needs this old thing for next year? The straw-hat shower was not a Cubs-only practice; this New York Times Red Sox/Yankees match report from mid-September 1921 mentions the ritual as a “popular form of expressing joy by baseball fans after Summer begins to wane.”
Baseball is one of the more superstitious sports. In The ’27 Yankees, Fred Glueckstein describes how straw hats took the blame for a lack of runs: “Convinced their straw hats had something to do with their first shutout, the Yankee players smashed them on the train back.” Their next shutout came the following day on September 4th, 1927, and they found more straw hats to smash. Dudes in the 1920s really liked to smash their summer boaters.
Scoring no runs led to players stomping on headwear, but the crowd saved their hat-demolition demonstration for a happy occasion. A week later, when Babe Ruth hit home run No. 50 of the season, fans threw their straw hats onto the field and the “celebration lasted for three minutes.” There were so many hats on the ground that coaches and players had to help remove them so play could continue.
Commerce helps drive these traditions — and disposable fashion isn’t a new concept. The notion of throwing away your summer hat when the weather starts to cool — in a society where most men wear a hat — is the perfect way to guarantee new customers for the following summer. It is similar to the idea of purchasing a new swimsuit when bikini season starts, but you probably didn’t stomp a hole in last year’s two-piece. But setting a date for seasonal changeovers, no matter how arbitrary, will have a positive impact on sales.
The New York Tribune riot article mentions how “the police reported that the youthful marauders were suspiciously active in the immediate vicinity of such [hat] stores.” Not an outward accusation, but certainly a raised eyebrow. There is no substantial evidence to suggest hatters were pulling the strings, but they did stay open late and certainly benefited from the incident. Multiple hat ads appear in the edition of the New York Times from the day after the riot, including one for Sarnoff-Irving beside the riot report, which would suggest this was a time of year when they counted on an influx of new business.
These hat episodes were still taking place in New York City as late as 1929. Despite pleas from straw-hat wearers to Police Commissioner Grover Whalen, the New York Times reports that on September 11th, the number destroyed “was placed at 1,000 hats.” The culprits included a “30-year-old man who had gone childish and was smashing hats right and left” and “a lad of 15, who was seriously about his duties.” His duties seemingly being destroying hats just for a lark.
Why did the straw-hat end-of-summer smashing tradition die out? As with a lot of changing trends, there isn’t exactly one specific reason, but the Wall Street crash in October 1929 probably made people more protective over their property with less cash to spend on a replacement. In Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora and the Death of the Hat, Neil Steinberg notes that 1920s college men started going hatless in part as a reaction to “the edicts of advertisers and etiquette writers; and the absurd war going on in the streets between slavish convention and barefooted mischief.” With fewer men wearing hats, there were fewer men to torment with this annual escapade. Also, you would think after a decade of straw-hat-related violence, New York City men would become wise to switching out which hat they wore come mid-September.
Switching between warm and cold seasonal attire can be tedious enough — I can never remember where I put all my beanies — without having to worry about your personal safety. So come September 15th, wear whatever hat you please. And if you want to dress in white at the same time, then go ahead, style etiquette rules be damned.