They were mainly utilitarian: a wide-brimmed hat. And there was a strong case that a moustache was something to be desired, especially in men’s lives, but this was never enough to be a manly beard in the middle of the 20th century.
The mustache is no longer required as a manly beard.
Now here’s a little history lesson: the moustache (and it is a moustache) is a symbol of the manly man — “moustache man”, to quote the word of the British writer and humorist, W. H. Auden. In his work on the history of men’s faces, Auden, in his classic “Moustache: The History of the Art of Moustache, said that in the beginning, in the early 20th century, the moustache was inextricably tied to the manliness, dignity, and masculinity of gentlemen and was never seen as anything more than a symbol of the man’s status and manhood.
In fact, the first full length moustache was worn by a man in England and Wales in 1846. However, this was a very short-lived style and the moustache was used for a long time to mean something else. The word “moustache” (derived from the Middle English mōsta ) originally meant “hair” or “hairiness”. The phrase was later used as a verb; moustache a man. The phrase is no longer used as an adjective, but as a noun. Moustaches had been the subject of literature and poetry for a long time before they became a fashion accessory. At first it could be used by men as an adjective to describe manhood. For example, if a male was bald, that was “Moustache a Bald”. The phrase did not always mean “tousled hair”, but it did have that power of attaching masculinity to the moustache.
Then, in the United States, one of the country’s leading experts published a paper in 1909 on moustaches and moustacheism in men, writing, “The moustache is a symbol of manhood, a part of the man’s appearance that is the product of long life, the result of a long career, and a characteristic expression of personal character; it is a moustache, in short, which represents the quality of manhood which comes from a long career and a lifelong struggle….Moustacheism