Sometimes fashion causes a riot––literally. In the 1920s, straw hats caused multiple riots across the East Coast.

Don’t wear white after Labor Day. Put away your open-toed shoes in fall. Avoid linen before Easter. These are some common fashion rules. But if you showed up on New Years Eve wearing white linen, you wouldn’t expect someone to attack you.
Yet in the early 1900s, multiple riots broke out over a particular seasonal item in men’s fashion: straw hats. And the straw hat riots of 1922 in New York City lasted for eight long days.
The Fashion for Straw Hats

Straw hats were in vogue in the early 20th century. Starting on Straw Hat Day, usually around May 15th, men unpacked their straw hats from storage and took to the streets. But on Felt Hat Day, around Sept. 15th, men were expected to set aside the straw hat for sturdier cold weather hats.
Advertisers took advantage of the custom, reminding men to check out the latest in hat fashion to stay current for the season.
The end of straw hat season became an event to celebrate. Stockbrokers would toss their hats on the stock market floor, crushing their old hats to show that they could afford to buy a new hat every spring.
In 1921, the Pittsburg Stock Exchange even made headlines by changing Straw Hat Day. As the New York Times reported, the floor committee declared that “straw hats may be worn with all the propriety and dignity attached thereto until and including Oct. 1.”
But what if you didn’t want to put away your straw hat in mid-September? Men who flaunted the fashion rule quickly found themselves under attack.
From Straw Hats to Riots
What caused straw hat riots? In the 1920s, men agreed that straw hats were acceptable in the summer. But when autumn came, lightweight headwear needed to return to their hat boxes. And when some flaunted the fashion law, enforcers took to the streets.

The straw hat rule was cultural rather than legal. If someone violated the unwritten rule, they might experience hat bashing. Teenagers, in particular, enjoyed knocking straw hats off people’s heads and stomping on them as a sign of public ridicule.
In 1910, police in Pittsburgh had to step in when youths targeted “straw-lidded pedestrians.”
“It is all right for stock brokers on the exchanges to destroy one another’s hats if they like, on the principle that everything goes among friends,” the Pittsburgh Press declared, “But no man likes to have his hat snatched from his head by somebody he has not yet been introduced to.”

Throughout the 1910s and into the 1920s, straw hat attacks marred autumn in America. And when a riot broke out in New York City in 1922––a few days before the end of straw hat season––the Times boldly defended the right to wear unseasonable hats.
“The inalienable right of a man to wear a straw hat in a snowstorm, if he desires, is to be upheld in this city by both police and the Magistrates, and a warning was sent broadcast to all straw hat smashers last night that jail terms on assault charges awaited them if they started any such carnival today.”
The Straw Hat Riots of 1922
Most of the time, wearing a straw hat out of season might draw stares or whispers. But sometimes, breaking the hat fashion rule could cause a riot.
That’s what happened in New York City during the straw hat riots of 1922.
That year, a gang of teens began roving the street, looking for straw hat wearers. If they found an offensive hat, they’d snatch it and smash it. And sometimes these attacks turned violent.

One day after the end of straw hat season, the Times described the riot: “Gangs of young hoodlums ran riot in various parts of the city last night, smashing unseasonable straw hats and trampling them in the street.”
But the rioters went even further: “A favorite practice of the gangsters was to arm themselves with sticks, some with nails at the tip, and compel men wearing straw hats to run a gauntlet.”
The New York Tribune described the attacks as a “straw hat smashing orgy” across the city. “A dozen or more were arrested and seven were spanked ignominiously by their parents in the East 104 Street police station by order of the lieutenant at the desk,” the paper reported.

When the teens attacked a group of dock workers, the workers hit back. The ensuing brawl shut down the Manhattan Bridge and required police to break it up.
That didn’t end the straw hat riot. More gangs searched for straw hats to destroy, with the mob eventually swelling to 1,000 teens. Police swarmed the streets of New York, arresting the hat attackers. “But as soon as the police broke up the gangs in one district, the hoodlums resumed their activities elsewhere,” an article reported.
And even police found themselves targeted by the rioters. “One police sergeant was tripped and fell into a gutter while chasing boys who had battered his hat,” a newspaper reported.
Magistrate Peter A. Hatting threw some of the offenders in jail, while others escaped with fines. “It is against the law to smash a man’s hat, and he has a right to wear it in a January snowstorm if he wishes,” Hatting ruled from the bench.
The End of Straw Hat Riots
Fortunately, the straw hat riot did not become an annual tradition. Over the next few years, straw hats gradually fell out of fashion and it became more acceptable to wear them year-round.
As men rioted over their hats, journalist Helen Rowland summed up the strange obsession with headwear.
“The average man’s devotion to his HAT is one of life’s greatest mysteries,” Rowland wrote in The Brooklyn Eagle in Sept. 1922. “It seems to be something sacred in his life, which he cherishes and protects as passionately as he does his dignity, his honor, and his grandmother’s memory. He will fight for it, quarrel over it and risk his life under a motortruck or a trolley car to salvage its remains, in a wind.”
Rowland also predicted the straw hat riot of 1922, which broke out days after she published her column. “When a boy wants to start a fight all he does is to snatch another boy’s hat—and the battle is on.”
And straw hats weren’t the only fashion item to cause a riot. In 1943, servicemen in Los Angeles attacked Mexican Americans wearing zoot suits, claiming the fabric-heavy outfits were unpatriotic during war-time rationing. The Zoot Suit Riots led to over 500 arrests and more than 150 injuries.
It’s not surprising that both fashion riots took place around wartime and during periods of national tension. Both the straw hat riots and the zoot suit riots revealed deep fractures in society––and fashion became a battlefield.
For more strange and fascinating stories from history, check out Bruce Wilson’s book Strange but True Stories: Fascinating Facts, Astonishing Trivia, and Conversation Starters from History.