lIt now seems as if the Mad Men fetishisation was the final hurrah for the man’s formal hat. An item that, a century ago, was as essential as trousers and shirts is close to death. It has entered a fashion black hole. Male celebrities have almost entirely stopped wearing hats, and those who still do really shouldn’t. Johnny Depp looks as if he is about to compere a slam poetry night in Tunbridge Wells, while Olly Murs looks as if he has been trapped in a children’s cartoon.

Summer is the perfect time to shelter under something large and floppy, but when I went into 10 major menswear stores at a Westfield shopping centre, in London this week – not one sold any hats apart from very casual iterations: caps, beanies and bucket hats. (Topman had a baker boy hat, somewhere between a flat cap and a Kangol beret, but it makes you look as if you are about to serve up school dinners.) Looking ahead to autumn/winter, it is the same story at trendsetting brands such as YMC, Ami and APC, which don’t have any non-casual hats as part of the new season’s ranges.

Caps and bucket hats have dominated Lanvin and Christopher Raeburn catwalks recently – and they were certainly on display everywhere in Westfield. The bucket hat re-emerged a few years ago on the hyper-stylish Swedish rap scene called cloud boys, after being sported by the scene’s leading light, Yung Lean. His fashion-conscious fans all began wearing bucket hats and the look spread to US rap, before becoming available at Urban Outfitters.

 

But like so much of the current vogue for 90s sportswear, while the bucket is cool, it looks ridiculous on anyone over 21. You can probably get away with caps and beanies until you are 30, but after that you look like an undercover cop trying to bust secondary school drug dealers. So what are you supposed to do after that? Are hats out of the question?

I speak to a couple of fashion experts who agree that formal hats conjure up unpleasant associations. Daryoush Haj-Najafi, a menswear writer and lecturer, says trilbies make him think of “Bacardi adverts”. Estefania Hageman, a stylist for menswear magazines, says the cap’s rise and the formal hat’s decline is part of a wider shift towards street culture. Skate brands such as Palace and Supreme dominate, while rappers such as Travis Scott and A$AP Rocky have become fashion icons. “We’re living in a moment that’s pure domination by hip-hop,” says Haj-Najafi. “The baseball cap is a New York item – hip-hop is from New York.”