#i think the no white aftet labor day thing is a holdover from this time

[captainsparklefingers]

I would like to draw attention, if I may, to the following line from today's section of Dracula, and why I find it funny on a few different levels:

"...That he be all in black, except that he have a hat of straw which suit not him or the time..."

Obviously, this is in reference to Dracula and his appearance as he makes his quick escape from London. I find it funny for a few reasons. First, and the most obvious, is that Drac is just wearing his typical attire, but with a straw hat, and it's so absurd to picture this guy all in black with this big straw hat to keep out the sun that just clashes with everything else about him.

The second reason is that it 'suits not the time'. Straw hats, during the time when men wearing hats was always done, were the hat of summer. You wore them during the summer season and when it passed September 15th, it was considered socially unacceptable to wear a straw hat anymore (at least in the US, I'm not sure about Europe). Think 'no white after labor day' but with hats.

So, Dracula is wearing this hat that looks silly on him because it doesn't suit him at all, and on top of that, he's breaking one of the unwritten rules of men's fashion. He just looks like a big ole goober on several levels, and I just really like the idea that in his panic to get out, he picked a hat to protect him from the sun (for some reason, it's not like the sun does harm to him, it just depowers him as previously established, but whatever), but instead of picking something that would help him blend in as a Normal Human Man™, he picked the one thing that makes him stand out and more memorable.

Plus, he's lucky that the worst that was done was people remarking that he looked like an idiot with his completely unsuitable hat. Those fashion laws were serious business! There was a whole riot in the 20s in New York because of straw hats (yes, really). Read the Wikipedia article about the Straw Hat Riot of 1922, listen to the Dollop episode about the riot...and then picture rapscallions trying to knock Dracula's already stupid looking hat off his head and smash it underfoot because he was wearing a straw hat in October, like an idiot.