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I heard once that JFK was the reason men stopped wearing hats.

I have seen this asserted for years and lazily absorbed it without pausing to think about it. Upon reflection, however, I doubt that something as fundamental as the hat was overthrown by anything as ephemeral as a fashion plate politician.

I suspect hats went out because of the overwhelming modern predominance of indoor work and the ascendancy of the automobile in Suburban Nation. In most parts of the country, one simply doesn't need a hat to get from the parking lot into the office (although there are the occasional really cold mornings when most of us at least briefly wish we had one).

A few years back, I was lucky enough to be able to walk to work. It took a couple of years but I eventually rediscovered the hat. A straw hat makes a world of difference under the sun and a good fedora and/or woolen walking hat puts February in a whole new light. The tradeoff is pretty simple: are you outdoors long enough to be willing to accept hat hair the balance of the day?

Attributing hatlessness to JFK is probably just another piece of Kennedy idolatry heaved up by iconographers anxious to credit him with something tangible aside from the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, and prostitution in the White House.