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My Fashion Revolution: Hats
I understand that men’s hats are out of fashion for men. I wear hats. Let’s be clear. A men’s hat has a 360-degree brim. A cap may have a bill. A cap is not a hat. I wear hats.
Hats come in many varieties, the most popular of which is the fedora. There are also the bowler (or derby), the top hat, the skimmer (or boater), the Homburg (which some class as a variation of the fedora), the trilby (small brimmed fedora), the pork pie (think Breaking Bad), the Outback, the cowboy hat, and many more.
I wear straw hats in warm weather.
Here is where I today announce that (1) I understand the traditional rules of hat wearing and (2) I plan to ignore them.
Traditional Rule #1. Straw Hat Season. Straw hats are acceptable only from May 25 through September 15. That may have made sense in jolly old England’s seasons. In the United States, we have a much larger window of warm weather. Especially in the South. The Traditional (English) rule makes no sense here.
Henceforth, I will begin wearing my straw hats when it is warm. I will stop when it is not warm.
Traditional Rule #2. Indoor Hat Wearing. Men may wear hats inside “public buildings” but not in restaurants, churches, or residences. If you believe the old movies, the only places men’s hat wearing was forbidden was churches. Today, cap wearers wear their caps everywhere, especially in restaurants. Yes, they look like buffoons when they do. But if they are not playing baseball, cap-wearers look like buffoons anyway. Especially when the cap is worn backward. Or has an extra wide, flat bill. (Have I offended anyone, yet?)
Henceforth, I will wear my hat everywhere but churches and private residences. Restaurants are fair game, especially if it is cold.
My rules. My way.
My go-to hat is a taupe-colored, foldable Borsalino fedora. But I get the most compliments on my black Homburg (which I wear only when wearing a coat and tie). For straw hats, I favor the Optimo crown, but I wear several different hats (fedora, gambler, homburg and others).
My motto is, “Men should wear hats.” The last of a dying breed, I fear.
Are there any other hat-wearers out there?
Published in General
I’ve got to quibble on that one.
That is a fez, not a hat, as I understand it.
Yes I wear hats anytime I’m outside. I don’t take them off inside except at church (taken off at the car not the door) or when I might be obstructing the view for someone seated behind me. I’ll only wear a cap when it is so windy that I’ll be chasing my hat more than wearing it. My reason has little to do with fashion; my dad and grandad had cancers cut off their faces and I’d rather not. So I wear it mostly for the shade, something a cap fails to provide for 80% of my head and neck.
I get both compliments and strange looks for my hat wearing and I don’t much care about either one, frankly. I neither care to set nor follow fashion.
There are two type of men that can wear a billed cap backwards without appearing like a buffoon:
What about those knitted wool hats that cover your head and ears. So toasty warm in winter. Those are hats. No brims either. You have made a fatal nitpicking mistake and the nerds or ricochet will now quibble this point on to death. I’m sorry for you sir. Let the great hat definition war begin.
I yield on wool hats being, perhaps, “hats.” Good for very cold weather outside. Dumb-looking when worn inside.
Also, the Catholic Church has brimless hats (per dictionary.com).
Still, a proper hat has a brim. I said it and I’m glad.
The First Rule of Officers Club is nobody talks about Officers Club.
The second (and only slightly less well known) rule,
He who enters covered here, buys the bar a round of cheer.
You wear women’s clothing?
Are you taking about a stocking cap? Or the type with the ear flaps (the Jayne Cobb)?
I wear, not a Borsalino or even a Stetson fedora, but a Bass Pro. Or I did, until my puppy chewed on it, last weekend.
knit toques are caps.
If I’m not in a suit in cooler weather, this leather number is my go to hat.
My straw hat is white with a black band. Don’t have any good pictures of it or my dress hat, a Stetson Sovereign. But on the sillier side…
Go big or stay home.
@arahant,
I used to have a leather hat like that one, but I found it was too fragile. A felt hat can get folded up or even stepped on, and recover. Or at least, the ones I’ve worn. With my leather hat, it seemed like anything would bend it out of shape. What’s your secret?
For those who don’t know that the Fedora started as feminine fashion and was named for a female character, read here. Fedora is basically the Russian version of Theodora, kind of like pronouncing Arthur as Arfur. (Queen Victoria had a half-sister named Feodora.)
Purchase the right brand? Fold up is right in the name.
I’ get skin cancer if the sun just blinks at me so I never leave home without a hat. Work hat, sort of a cloth formerly outback with paint stains and grunge, really rancid, but I can and must swim with it and that helps clean it up a little. My go to hat if it’s not too hot, is a heavy leather outback bought in Pocon Chile for 15$, And my fishing hats are all western, in South America, panama hats. In Wy one never removes ones hat, perhaps because the hair underneath cowboys is sweaty and dirty, besides nobody has hat racks anymore, but when I lived there I liked the custom because you can’t forget your hat. My wife would decapitate me if I wore a cap, and backwards I can’t imagine the punishment.
When you have to check the bar on the “f”.
Men in the 30s and 40s could wear a hat. No one since that time has been able to, except for John Wayne in his cowboy hat. Everyone else looks affected, especially the only ones who wear non-baseball hats here in Portland, the hipsters. But then hipsters, with their little goatees and skinny jeans, look affected in whatever they wear. Portland has an increasing number of hipsters. I think they’ve evolved to the point where they’re able to breed with one another.
I’m sorry, guys, but if you’re wearing anything but a baseball hat, you look like you’re showing off. Except for the guys with sensitive skin. I’ll let you guys go, as long as you carry a medical card that allows you to wear a hat.
Kent
If you say so.
And the problem with that is?
I normally don’t wear a hat unless I am doing yard work (thanks to a balding scalp). My younger brother and middle son both regularly wear hats. Their hats are trademarks. (They wear different kinds of hats.) My son got his first engineering job because of his hat. (An old guy saw him and his hat in the lobby when my son went in for a job interview. The two spent ten minutes talking hats. The old guy turned out to be the owner, who liked my son’s attitude about hats.)
Hey, that’s the hat I wear! Had it for 15 years now, wear it when it rains or in the spring or fall. If I’m cold I wear a stocking cap. Otherwise, I generally don’t bother with head coverings. That goes for hair too, for that matter.
3.When riding a motorcycle.
I think I’ve stirred up the hat people, so I want to recant everything I said.
Kent
Why recant? I agreed with you.
OK, I recant my recant.
Kent
Are we speaking of the medial s again? ſ or ſ
What’s wrong with showing off. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
I think you need to repent, instead.
I said something on this topic a while back.
I sometimes wear my baseball cap when I’m dining with Mrs R in a restaurant, especially if it’s cold. I don’t have hair to keep my head warm, so it helps. If it’s a restaurant with linen tablecloths, I’ll do without it.
At today’s retiree breakfast at Uncle Ernie’s, I took my cap off, but I don’t always. (This one is an eight-panel newsboy cap. I’ve switched to my linen summer cap already, even though there’s a trace of snow on the ground. If I had been wearing a baseball cap, I might have left it on.)