"Throughout history, men have worn hats as a way of showing how much better they are than other men. “I buy hats,” a behatted man seems to say. “I am better than you.”
In wartime, hats were a useful way of conferring rank, and ensuring that casualties were confined to the lower classes
(hence the famous command of “Don't fire till you see the tops of their heads” at the Battle of Bunker Hill by William Prescott, a general renowned for only shooting enemy combatants who were poor).
During peacetime, hats have been instrumental for men to let the non-hatted know just who is wearing the hat around here."