charliehall,
Given that the fedora wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, it is really difficult to argue that it is halachically required.
Please don’t beat up the straw man, he did nothing to you:-)
I don’t think that anybody here, even the nuts (and those pretending to be nuts to discredit the positions they disagree with), are arguing that a fedora is halachically required. A lot of black hats worn by chareidim aren’t even fedoras (no pinches or crease on the crown, for example).
The arguments here seem to be:
1. Is there a halachic requirement to wear a hat when davening?
2. Are black hats somehow more special than others?
I sympathize with those making the argument that the clothes should not bespeak the man, because in reality, they do not. It is also reality, however, that human beings are not telepathic and cannot see into the depths of another’s soul in the span of a few minutes. Therefore, every human culture utilizes clothing to make statements about status, temperament, and association, to allow the wearer to transmit information about themselves to others. In other words, the clothes do not bespeak the man, but they do bespeak what the man wants others to see. If you do not believe me, go to a job interview in jeans and a t-shirt and tell the hiring manager that your choice of clothes doesn’t reflect on how well you can work.
Like it or not, there is a culture within Orthodox Judaism that identifies as Yeshivish, and wears white shirts and black jackets and hats as a part of this cultural identification. Orthodox Jews who wear kippa srugas are also making a cultural statement (e.g., modern Orthodox, Zionist, etc). There is value in identification with a culture, so it’s certainly not silly for a person to wear clothing that identifies himself with the culture he chooses. This does not mean that a person wearing the headgear of one culture is more religious than anyone else; the clothes cannot tell us that. It does tell us with whom the person identifies, however.
So to the people who are saying that clothing doesn’t matter: you have human behavior since the dawn of civilization at odds with you.