ABSTRACT
Bowlers have had a long tradition as a preferred form of head wear for men reaching well back into the nineteenth century. In 1963, however, the hats sold at a furious rate to women, not as gifts for men but rather to wear themselves. Signs of the craze were everywhere, including the pages of fashion magazines and the mannequins in department-store windows throughout the United States (US). But women in public offered the strongest proof, displaying the bowler in myriad forms and styles. Though most popular in straw, they were available in every possible fabric from linen to leopard. In addition, they could be made to look entirely new merely by switching ribbon color or substituting feather for flower. Bowlers apparently won the hearts of women because they were neither as impractical nor as small as competing forms of head gear.
