Men in Hats (with no man)

     With the return of regular posting in this blog your faithful correspondent is also bringing back the "Men in Hats" feature.
     The hat for this post is the trilby hat. Or, as we at Bloody Nib Manor refer to it, "the awful trilby."
     The trilby hat was inspired by the by the first stage production of George du Maurier's 1890's novel "Trilby." The novel gave us the term Svengali and the play gave us the hat. In the play the character Trilby (who was a woman) wore a hat that became so popular among the British aristocracy that it it became a "thing" with the character's name attached to it.
     So, what is a trilby hat? A trilby hat is a proper fedora that has been ruined by a pair of scissors. The brim has been snipped away to unusefulness and the crown has been shortened. It's the type of thing that may look good on jeune filles or gamines, but the fact of the matter that most of them are worn by men. And they just don't work. Some of the British aristocracy used to wear them back in the day when the aristos were considered silly, but the style soon was taken up by race course hacks, betting shop owners, mods, and rockers and the "cool" crowd. At the Manor the hat has always been regarded as slightly disreputable like the pork-pie hat. 
     It's a bad combination of a cap and a hat.
     Few people can get away with wearing a trilby. The only man that this writer and recall having done so is Rex Harrison. Young women can get away with wearing one because they can be Trilby. Besides, yours truly gives young women a lot of leeway because they are silly and cute and this writer is an old bloke.
     If you're a man and have finally gotten the sense to wear a hat or cap don't wear a baseball cap (those are for kids, ball players and machine gunners in B-17s) or a trilby. Be a man, a real grown up man, and wear a real hat or cap like a Stetson, a fedora or a beret.
     Here's a picture of a trilby if you don't know what one is:
     Awful Trilby Hat