Old Hats From the Sears Roebuck and Wards Catalogues

[Gold Lady]

I was going through some of my old books, and came upon two reproduction catalogs that I haven't looked at in years, a 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co., and a 1927 Sears, Roebuck, and Co.

Thumbing through them, I came across the men's hat sections. There were some great hats back then.
As my husband says, "That's when real men wore hats."

Here are the pages with western styles from the 1895 Wards catalog:

The sombrero with bangles (top, center) is fantastic.

Here are the 1927 Sears hats. Love the bodacious Our Big Boy, and the Carlsbad.

[Wolfgang]

Great stuff. I need to dig out my old catalogs for late night reading. Got 'em around here someplace.

[Tim Mc Nulty]

Yes ms. Gold lady them are some fine hats. Althought some are "dude" hats I do like the more western ones. Wish those prices were like that today. Thanks for the post great stuff.

[Gold Lady]

Hi Jeff, will do.

Tim, don't we all wish prices stayed that low. Although when you figure that in 1895, the average wage was probably a dollar per day, these hats weren't cheap then. I'm curious why they were sold by the dozen, too. Would shop owners buy them from the Ward's cataog, instead of a wholesaler?

[Danny Meadows]

Yes, thank you. I have studied the Wards repro catalog...for hat styles and it looks like several hat styles were worn or at least available in the "old west" ....of 1895 anyway.

[Tishomingo]

Thanks so much for the wonderful old photos--great post.
My father never left the house without a hat, not even to walk the dog.
There's nothing like a man in a hat. (Or a lady in a hat for that matter!)
Back in the 80s I wore hats and I noticed that I always got waited on first which infuriated everyone else waiting. I guess it was because when you wear a hat you really stand out.

[Margaret-Anne Moore]

Even when I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, a lady never left her home without a hat and a pair of gloves--I think one of the reason sthat went out in the 1960s was because of some of the hair styles that came out! Gold Lady, thanks; what nostalgia! I am collecting some of the genre movies from the 1930s, and the hats in the Sears catalog remind me of some of the hats I have seen in those movies. You should try to look at Thomas Holland's book on the toy catalogs of the 1950s and 1960s.

[Margaret-Anne Moore]

One of the men in the Sears catalog looked a little bit like Lyndon Johnson, before he became President, wearing a Texas-size Hat!

[Gold Lady]

The bottom left?  He does remind me of LBJ.  I always think of him wearing a big hat like that.

[Margaret-Anne Moore]

Are you certain it is not him? He came from cowboy country and probably did some cowboying.

[Murray A. Gewirtz]

While different style cowboy hats are shown in the 1895 catalog, the differences are pretty subtle. The basic shapes are all quite similar. there is much more variation in styles of modern cowboy hats.