Wearing at hat while dining

I love wearing hats. I don't mean the baseball cap variety, but a fedora akin to what you saw on every man's head before the mid 1960s. Supposedly, JFK ended the hat trend when he went bare headed at his inauguration in 1961. However, my wife Donna says it is very inappropriate to wear a hat while dining in a restaurant. Yet, if I take my hat off, inevitably I have "hat head," and my hair looks like a rat's nest. I think I look very hip and trendy with a hat on my head. What is your opinion? Are hats inappropriate while dining? Let me know. Phil

if you feel that you need to ask, then you probably already know the answer.
imo

Yes, it is also inappropriate to wear a hat indoors, period.

I still adhere to all the old fashioned Old South rules including only wearing white between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I don't care what those upstarts on What Not To Wear say.

I was raised with a stern grandmother and her love of manners and etiquette. Two of her favorites were "When a lady approaches your table for a social greeting, the gentlemen at the table stand until they are acknowledged by the lady to sit" (I still feel her pointed shoes hitting my shin) and when you walked in a door from the outside, and you had a hat on, it was the first thing to come off.

I dont find it inappropriate to wear a hat indoors ever, but some restaurants I feel that I shouldnt wear one. If it's a pretty casual restaurant I'll leave it on, but some less casual one I will remove my hat. From the types of places you've listed wanting to dine at Phill I think you wouldnt be wearing a hat in many of them.

When you crossed the Ohio river, you entered a new land my friend. New things to do and new things to learn. It's all good, so have no fear.

[Robin Garr]

In propah Louisville society, a hat should never be worn indoors. Doubly so if it's a baseball hat. Four times so if you turn it around backwards.

I agree with hats off inside.

My mom used to make me take off my hat when we entered the mall. Talk about having paranoid "hat-head" fears. When you're growing up...you go to the mall to be cool...not walk around with hat head.

When we went on vacation...my uncle would wear a Panama Jack style hat all over the place even at dinner...one night I said, mom, uncle Joe is wearing a hat inside and at the table. Her response was that he wasn't HER son and "our" mother(my granny) would be horrified with his behavior.

So for me...hat on at BW3's...ok...hat on at Corbett's, Napa, Jack Fry's....no way.

This whole no hats on indoors EVER mentality will always baffle me.

Isn't the sort of original intent of a hat to protect a person's head from the elements? I mean primarily, even if many of them are mostly decorative. So yes, hats off inside. For me, when I see a person wearing a hat inside, it suggests they're either so tied to the decorative element of it that they can't bear to take it off, even when they know it's sort of more proper etiquette to take it off, or they're hiding something (hat head or lack of hair). I used to have a ferrier who wore a hat everywhere. I didn't think about it too much, until it got to be such a thing that I wondered whether he wore it to bed. He was young, 24 or something, cuter'n hell, and then one day it came off as he wrestled my young colt for a foot trim and voila! Nearly totally bald. From then on it just screamed insecurity.

Hats off inside, Phil.

I'm going to start wearing ONLY a hat to dinner.

Any NEVER-EVER wear your hat into a bar, nor put it onto the bar, for if you do, a bell will be wrung (no angel getting wings here), and you've just bought the ENTIRE house a round of drinks (leastwise in military bars).

Well, Donna is always right and again, she is the voice of reason. Now, for a twist: How about wearing a hat when you are dining outside in warm weather? I would think, even at the most elegant establishments, that would not be considered inappropriate.

In contrast to what you have advised me, I do remember an elderly (He was probably my age, but I have not accepted my maturity yet) gentleman dining at Galatoires in New Orleans for their venerable Sunday brunch. He was wearing a white suit, a Panama fedora on his head, and he walked with a silver cane. He looked so cool and sophisticated. Would you also consider this bastion of New Orleans society uncouth and ill-mannered? (Somehow, writing this, I see the ghost of Tennessee Williams cringing at me)