The Bloody Consequences of Wearing a Straw Hat After Summer

In the 1920s, refusing to switch to a felt hat was a very, very serious fashion faux pas. Wearing white after Labor Day is a well known and outdated end-of-summer style faux pas, but in the 1920s, if you were a man sporting a straw hat in New York City come mid-September, then a bout of public humiliation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...