Pardon my out-of-townishness, but what difference does all of it make? How can you estimate someone’s avodas HaShem by such trivial details? Tsitsis in or out, brim up or down, shirt color, hat or not – give us a break! What has this got to do with a person’s middos, or their sincerity?
All the same, I have two questions:
1. Why the ongoing inflation in hat sizes? In the last 10-15 years not only have the hats becvome obligatory, they’ve also gotten larger. The crowns are higher, and – more noticeably – the brims have gotten wider and wider until your average yeshiva bochur looks like he strayed in from a 1930’s cowboy movie. To someone who’s not used to it it’s really funny, and it’s way beyond the size that people used to wear “before Lakewood.”
2. Since when is it obligatory for girls and women to wear black too? Especially in the East, this seems to now be almost halachah – no colors, just black, white and the occasional shade of grey. Again, this is a chiddush. Ladies used to wear colors (just not bright red). I remember hearing that black makes someone look thinner. Is that the origin? Or has there been a psak about looking grim that I missed hearing?