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Haberdashers and Milliners

The haberdashery is something you don’t see anymore.  It used to be a common sight in Western countries, when it was expected for a man to wear a hat when he left the house.  There was enough of a demand for them that they remained a staple in American shopping districts until the 1960s, when fashions began to change.  But you could at one time make a good living at it; it’s what Harry Truman did before he entered politics.  Some say that it was another president, Jack Kennedy, who was partly responsible for hats going out of fashion in America, since he seldom wore them.  (And with a head of hair that good, why would he?)  Of course, there’s no way to measure this, but the disappearance of hats from men’s (and women’s) heads seems to coincide with the Kennedy administration (though I remember my father and other men wearing hats to work until the early 1980s). A ladies’ hat shop was called a milliner’s, and those have also largely vanished.  It might seem strange that there