The mid height beaver fur or silk Top hat with curled brim was still the best hat for formal wear in the 1920’s. It had been popular for a century and remained the hat for formal wear for another 50 years or more. It was an everyday hat until the 1920’s encouraged informality and soft hats in all matters of dress. Many traditional upper class gentlemen still wore them in business settings and especially democratic political gatherings. The younger generation thought they were a “vicious, vile, and ugly symbol of the ungodly Victorian” said Westminster Abby’s Canon Donaldson in 1927.
For most men dawning a silk hat was something only done at weddings and grand opera performances where men in cheaper seats found it more useful to have a collapsible silk top hat that they could tuck under their seats.