On May 17, 2017, the Delta Kappa Epsilon Facebook page had this post on fraternity hat bands and my interest was piqued.
An article in The Scroll of Phi Delta Theta (1910-11) reported:
An extensive business in fraternity hat bands is now done by Jacob Reed’s Sons, 1424-1426 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, whose advertisement appears elsewhere in The Scroll. The firm carries in stock thousands of yards of hat band ribbons which display the colors of 20 leading fraternities. The various designs are shown on the insert in this issue of the magazine. It is a rule of the firm not to sell a fraternity hat band without satisfactory evidence that it is to be used by some one entitled to wear it. In many instances entire chapters have joined in ordering enough bands to fit out every man at the beginning of the straw hat season. Many alumni also wear thus the colors of their respective fraternities. The designs are in neat rather than ‘loud’ patterns. Being worn on the hat, the band of fraternity colors forms an easily recognizable emblem of membership, and enables members of different chapters to identify fraternity mates who in many cases would be otherwise unknown to them.
In the last two or three years the demand for the bands has been so great that the firm has appointed reputable haberdashers in a number of college towns to act as agents, first exacting from them an assurance that they would exercise every precaution in selling the goods, so as to avoid a possibility of their being purchased by persons who have no right to wear them. Recently the firm has been offering neckties in the same colorings and designs as the fraternity hat bands.
From a Cornell University Alumni News, 1909. The shop was likely one of the haberdashers authorized to sell the hat bands.
A hat band advertisement that appeared in the Scroll of Phi Delta Theta. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell colors in black and white.
The fraternity hat band ad in color! Photo courtesy of the Student Life and Culture Archives at the University of Illinois.
Chi Omega has a 1901 Convention hat band in Founders’ Library at the Psi Chapter, Chi Omega’s founding chapter at the University of Arkansas. There were 15 delegates at that convention so it is truly amazing this hat band has survived!
