An old chestnut goes that American men cast off their hats once and for all in 1961, when John F. Kennedy stood up to deliver his inaugural address with nothing atop his big auburn head to protect it from the gelid, 22-degree Washington day. But Optimo Hats founder Graham Thompson, who probably knows more about hats than anyone dead or alive, waves this off as a specious piece of armchair history. “The absolute peak of the global hat industry was 1914. It’s been in a nosedive ever since then.