Among the things I inherited from my late father was a healthy attitude towards hats. He wore them only in very special circumstances, and there were two circumstances: fishing – in which the lichen-green number, decorated with the strange fly, was comfortable and appropriate – and leaving for your summer vacation.
A man’s hat in civilian life is usually something to be viewed with suspicion. The bowlers went the way of the watch with the vest. Flat hats are for farmers and hipsters. The extravagant felt fedora, worn by potentially naughty literary men in late middle age, tends to smell like vulgar self-promotion. And hats while driving a car – perhaps accompanied by leather gloves for driving on a Sunday afternoon “spin” – are the most severe affectation. A passenger in a hat, my old man muttered as he found himself behind one of the summer alleys of my childhood.
This rhyme must be kept in mind. There are few men who can constantly take off their hats in civilian life. As for me, the list is limited to Indiana Jones (Fedora), Del Boy Trotter (Flat Hat), Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (Bowler) and Benny from Crossroads (Hat) – and it should be noted that all this are fictional characters.
My strictness on this front is partly the result of early humiliation. Inspired by the first of these examples, I asked for Fedor for a birthday as a teenager, I got one, and I’m still blushing to imagine a skinny 11-year-old wandering downtown Dorking in the late ’80s. century in a fedora would look.
But a straw hat for summer, combined with a clean white shirt with an open collar, knee-length shorts and flip-flops, is a nice thing. For those of us with a prescription from an optician who prevents us from wearing contact lenses – and who don’t want the cost of prescription sunglasses, the sinister look of photochromatic lenses (the kind that darken in the sun) or unsatisfactory fastening, fluff scrolling – A wide-brimmed hat is essential in bright sunlight.
Endless Joy Floral Prints Tencel Blend Twill Hat Bucket, £ 120, mrporter.com New Era 9FORTY Woven Hat New York Yankees, £ 30, selfridges.com
The last few years in my house have been the unmistakable sign of summer that I reach from the top of the wardrobe to the straw hat I bought from a street market in Cuba in, God, 2009. It cost me $ 5, traveled the world and – although the band of the black cloth hat has been erased and faded, and the salty tides of sweat have made small cards along the inner edge – it is in surprisingly good shape.
This is the kind of hat that people tend to call panama, although my grandfather insisted that a suitable Panama hat, like his, should have a seam on top and be able to be rolled up so that you can put it in suitcase. Mine never goes in a suitcase – but it landed happily on top of my hand luggage in countless luggage compartments above my head and sailed through customs on board many carts.
It not only signals the summer, but also participates in all kinds of summer activities. You can enjoy the affectation by raising and lowering it slightly in greeting. You can practice the Michael Jackson-style arm wrapping maneuver to place it on your head to impress your children (hat at an angle down, grasp the back of the periphery slightly with your fingers, rotate and turn). It makes a convenient storage for keys and a wallet when you swim. And, of course, it covers your whole face more comfortably and airily than anything else when you consider an afternoon nap on a deck chair.
Despite warnings against men wearing hats, my more thoughtful colleagues inform me that hats are making a comeback for men’s fashion – and they do it just in time for summer. Selfridges reports that sales of hats have increased by 80 percent compared to 2019. If you do not want to look like a holiday dad, in other words, there are acceptable alternatives.
It’s weird, but the hottest item du jour – or, as fashionistas put it, the “key shape” – is actually the good old hat, which for those of us with a certain vintage, inevitably means Manny (or Renny, or Stimpy, or whatever). whether he called) from Stone Roses and takes us back to the smudge of baggy pants and blissful vibes and we pretend you were at the concert on Spike Island.
Judging by Mr. Porter’s choice these days, the bucket hat has appeared since I was a boy. I was rather captivated by a black bucket hat from Endless Joy (slogan: “Free your mind and your ass will follow”), sprinkled with creamy and yellow epiphyllum colors, as well as Pop Trading Company’s big and low look at style in dark blue velvet. One is a rave, one is a fleet. Both will curl up and fit comfortably in your back pocket. Isabel Marant’s purple-purple Chapeau Haleyh is a beautiful thing, I thought – but a little too extreme for me to miss. Fortunately, the delightful unisex nature of the bucket hat means that my 12-year-old daughter will look great in it.
Palm Angels baseball cap embroidered with cotton and twill, £ 155, mrporter.com Pop Trading Company, embroidered with cotton and velvet logo, £ 55, mrporter.com
And then, of course, there are baseball caps – which come in a dizzying number of varieties, from practically disposable to something north of £ 500 (thanks to Brunello Cucinelli). And since that’s the fashion, if you’re impressed by Celine Hom’s fishnet hat, you can spend £ 335 to look like Cletus’s slack jaw from The Simpsons.
For those of us who have gone through the first wave of our youth, I must say that baseball caps should be worn, if at all. Back says an American young man fed beef or, worse, Steve Buscemi, who says, “How are you, children’s friends?” ) and the mesh-crown guy who says you’re aiming to either ride an 18-wheeler through the Nevada desert or open a cereal café in Hoxton Square. If you don’t bend the periphery in an arch, by the way, you look like a rapper or a South Korean professional video gamer, both of whom are difficult visions for middle-aged Englishmen.
For people like me, the classic style is, in my opinion, the way. I have a suitable Yankees hat, non-adjustable, which has had a strange way out of the baseball game. Palm Angels and folk clothing, for example, create a nice understated hat made of a single color fabric without a plastic clasp and with a nice curve to the edge. However, if you are under 30, you can fall in love with exquisite ironic applications and bright colors (example: the fun Toytown range of Central Bookings International).
And yet, if all else fails – and you leave your favorite straw hat in the overhead compartment, for example, when you leave the plane – there’s always you, an old handkerchief with knots.
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