By ROD NORDLAND

KABUL, Afghanistan - It once attracted the admiration of trendsetters in the West, the jests of comedians at home and abroad, and the somewhat impotent ire of animal rights advocates.

Hamid Karzai’s hat, while still firmly on the Afghan president’s head whenever he appears in public, is no longer quite the symbol it once was.

Known as a karakul hat, and made of the pelt of fetal or newborn lambs of the karakul breed of sheep, traditionally it was something worn by Tajiks and Uzbeks from northern Afghanistan. When Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun from the turban-wearing south, took office in 2002, the karakul hat was part of his attempt to devise a wardrobe that was Afghan rather than ethnic or regional.

It was a move widely praised at the time, in Afghanistan and abroad. The American designer Tom Ford called Mr. Karzai “the chicest man on the planet.” Afghans looking for national symbols after decades of ethnic strife inspired a brisk trade in the hats, made of lambskins from Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and fashioned by Kabul’s hatters, whose shops lined both sides of Shah-e-do Shamshera Wali Road.

Now, a tainted presidential election later, and with efforts to make a truly multiethnic government foundering, the sheen is off the fur headwear.

Young men no longer wear it; Mr. Karzai’s opponent in the aborted election runoff, Abdullah Abdullah, a northerner, preferred a hatless suitand- tie ensemble. All but 12 of the hatters shops have closed on Shamshera Road . Those remaining say they are lucky to sell a hat a day.

“I went back to my village in Logar wearing my karakul hat,” said Ahmed, an Afghan in his 50s, who was shopping for a new hat, “and people laughed: ‘There goes the old man who thinks he’s president.’ ”

Just as Mr. Karzai’s hat is more than just a hat, the reaction against it is more than just a fashion whim. “It would have been better if he just wore a turban. It would have been more honest,” said Rahnaward Zariab, a novelist and cultural commentator on Tolo TV in Kabul. “Instead he deceived the nation. The costume of Karzai doesn’t mean anything; it’s not a symbol anymore. Now we are seeing his actions, and it’s clear now that he is a Pashtun.”

Mr. Zariab complained that there were relatively few non-Pashtuns in Mr. Karzai’s new cabinet, which is yet to be completely approved by Parliament.

Efforts to solicit a comment from the president on his headgear met with no success, and slight annoyance. “Everything else is finished with,” said his spokesman, Waheed Omer, “Now you’re going to write about the hat?”

Mr. Karzai once explained his affection for the hats. “I wear them because they are very, very Afghan,” he said, according to an Associated Press account. “And if it looks good, all the better.”

Among the hatters, the president still gets rave reviews for his good taste. He is also one of their best customers.

Mr. Karzai’s affection for the karakul hat is so strong that, if the hatters’ accounts are to be believed, he has purchased dozens of them since taking office. Sayed Habib Sadat, owner of one of the remaining hat shops on Shamshera Road, says he has sold Mr. Karzai 15 karakul hats .

“The president is bringing the old traditions together and showing people: ‘I’m an Afghan. I’m using my own tradition,’ ” Mr. Sadat said. “It’s been good for him, and for us.”