Hat Check

fanfair

After decades of discredit and deplorable neglect, that cornerstone of masculine elegance and taste, le cha peau, is making a come back, just in time to brighten the balmy summer days. When I was a boy, no self-respecting member of my sex would venture out in public before donning the indispensable fedora (or bowler, trilby, or Panama), and when one considered those pinnacles of true sartorial splendor—Fred Astaire, Sir Anthony Eden, Lucius Beebe, or even Sir Winston himself—one reflected almost immediately upon their crowning achievements. My father's closet always contained at least ten pieces of headgear, and when he dressed, his priorities were clear: his hat was always properly and adroitly adjusted before his trousers.

To this day I cannot take a non-hatwearing man seriously. Look at the evidence: Pat Moynihan and Mikhail Gorbachev wear hats. Ed Koch doesn't.

RICHARD MERKIN

The Hat Pack

Gay Talese Tom Wolfe Karl Lagerfold Saul Bellow Henry Geldzahler Ed Hayes Robert Morgenthau John Kluge Philippe Davario John Chancellor George Shultz Robin Williams McDermott & McGough Raoul Felder