15 January 2009

Top Hats

Lately there have been a lot of commercials for the museum at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library running during the local news. Can't imagine why...

Not surprisingly, one of them features footage from his innaugural address. When it came on tonight, Mrs. G said "Look at all of those guys in top hats."

I said "Can you believe this how men dressed for formal occasions only 50 years ago? These days you're lucky if you can get a guy to wear long pants to a funeral."

I can be quite an old man sometimes.



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re:
"These days you're lucky if you can get a guy to wear long pants to a funeral."

These days, you're lucky if the deceased isn't wearing short pants.

Pigtown*Design said...

Shocking. I can't believe how little respect people have for ceremony.

Anonymous said...

can we please see a pill-box hat revival.

Kim said...

I hate that people won't be bothered to get dressed up for anything anymore. If you won't get dressed up for a wedding, a funeral, church, the theatre, etc. then just exactly WHEN are you supposed to get dressed up?

I'm from the Midwest, and believe me, it's much worse there. At least in the South there are a lot more people who will wear a tie to church or a wedding. Even 20 something boys can be enticed to wear a seersucker suit on Easter or at the very least the khaki pants/blue blazer uniform. But in the Midwest it seems that if you're wearing a pair of pants instead of jeans and a sweater instead of a sweatshirt, that is now "dressed up". People actually wore jeans and t shirts to DOTR's 30th high school reunion banquet and gave him a hard time for wearing a suit.

I could go on, but I won't.

SCO said...

When Reagan was lying in state in 2004, people were outraged (and rightly so) following images in the news of people lined up to view the president and wearing shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops.

I suspect the only thing that will keep people reasonably modest during next week's inauguration is the cold. Even so, I'll be surprised to see anyone properly dressed for the occasion.

Anonymous said...

When will we see some women wearing hats again? Pill box hats not on styling black ladies on Sundays maybe but on all stylin ladies all the time. I see more men wearing pork pies and such with ease lately though, not in costume either.

heavy tweed jacket said...

I'm not very optimistic that it will get much better. I agree with Seth, can you imagine what the crowds would look like in July or August? That would be the sartorial test.