There is mention on the changing a vintage coat hook post references to hats.
As some of you are aware I have a liking for the fez/ tarboush but to be honest I don’t often wear it. I do have my travel fez which is foldable and ideal for packing. However last year I was gifted a rather nice regency top hat but again feel it must only be worn on special occasions it’s certainly not everyday wear.
But are hats everyday wear now? Last year I saw someone wearing a bowler hat which was most unusual unlike back in the sixties when working in ‘the city’ necessitated wearing a bowler with an accessory of a furled umbrella..
Do you wear a hat ,a cap or even a head scarf?
Does it hide that incipient hair loss or just to keep the pate warm?
Here’s my good self atop the HoP wearing my travel fez, possibly a first.
I have a couple of fedoras which I enjoy in cost weather, but since Covid I rarely wear the smart clothes to go with them. These days it’s more likely to be a plain black beanie in the winter months or as straw hat if I’m outdoors all day in summer.
This is me setting out on a trip to London in the Covid days mentioned above, fedora positive. You might laugh now but this is what all he cool kids were wearing at the start of this decade.
I’m thinking, if the bandages came off, you’d be completely transparent?
Well it never Rains but it …….. pause
It does get Claudey when the sun goes in.
I wear hats all the time, either to protect my bald bonce from the sun or rain. I favour caps, baseball in summer, flat or peak in winter, or trilbies, with the occasional pork pie, beanie or fedora.
If I see a male person with a hat on then I assume they are bald!
I have a magnificent head of hair but just bought a floppy hat for walks/runs in the extremely hot sun we have right now, I have to be careful of sunburn with my current medication. Hat cost $3
For similar reasons to Dai, I am UV hypersensitive – as if being a Ginger wasn’t enough – and I don’t go out without the hat I bought in Alice Springs in 1998. It’s an Expert Kiwi Ranger Hat, apparently, rather like this one:
https://www.craghoppers.com/expert-kiwi-ranger-hat-pebble-1/
Strangely enough I knew the couple that started Craghoppers off back in the seventies.
Flat cap for winter months to warm the head.
Also used to keep the rain off.
The first I had was about 3 sizes too big making me look like Norman Wisdom.
Hats worn indoors by men. I have a strong antipathy for that.
I am also involuntarily suspicious of male musicians who wear hats onstage indoors, though there are some exceptions made for dark-coloured beanies, for cultural headgear, for hats that are part of an actual stage costume and for hats worn by musical eccentrics that I like, such as the late Thelonious Monk.
I have yet to find a hat that suits my ugly mug. Baseball caps are a complete no-no. Beanies on my bonce remind me of Benny from Crossroads should I look in a mirror while wearing one. Cheesecutter caps are sort of OK. Cotton bucket hats are OK. Wide brimmed hats, particularly straw ones, just look ridiculous on me.
I keep a bucket hat (reversible, one side navy blue, the other side camouflage) in my car for emergency use. I have a dark grey speckled cheesecutter cap that I haven’t worn for at least a couple of years. I have a black woolen beanie with a Duff Beer logo showing Homer Simpson somewhere that hasn’t been worn in at least 5 years.
Although I am a baldie I am not a hat person.
Being decidedly bald and I shave my head to eradicate any residual growth to remove any doubt, as a rule I wear hats for the simple reason that my head gets cold in the winter months and gets too much sun exposure during the occasionally sunny summer weather. If it’s warm but cloudy and my head is freshly shaved I will saunter around sans a head covering. I mostly wear newspaper boy caps or baseball caps in the warmer weather and beanies during the harsher weather.
I have a couple of flat caps, though the blue one is rather faded and I lost the black one on my trip to the UK this summer. I also have a rather nice straw trilby which comes out in the summer sometimes. I used to have a newsboy cap, which I loved, but it got a bit unkempt and hasn’t been worn recently – a shame, as it was the only titfer that made my massive head look slightly smaller. I have a green baseball cap and a docker’s cap, but the former looks trashy and the latter doesn’t give me any shade.
The purpose these days is to keep my sex machine solar panel* covered up as it continues to get broader and threaten to join up conclusively with my widow’s peaks, but I also like to go out with it to show that I’m not completely bald and grey just yet.
It’s a very sunny day today, so it’ll be the straw trilby that gets admired by all and sundry. It’ll go nicely with my new spectacles, which replace my 3 year old pair that are so scratched I can’t read anything through them.
My late dad had a straw trilby that really suited him, for summer wear. Sadly his head was much smaller than mine, so I couldn’t take it over after he passed.
Here I am, waiting for this evening’s double bill of heavy metal to kick off in about 10 minutes. It’s a very chill atmosphere, which is probably typical for German metal audiences
I’ve got four fedoras of slightly different styles – three black, one brown – and a blue flat cap. They all get plenty of wear during the colder months of the year, and I reckon they all add a little character of their own to the appearance.
Hubes manages to look suave and sophisticated in his headgear, whereas any attempt at similar hattage on my part is generally met with howls of derision and the sight of a complete dickhead staring back at me from the mirror,
Having said that, I’m partial to a colourful knitted beanie or two in the winter (I have a large collection) and use a North Face canvas hat to keep the sun off in the summer.
I’ve got a couple of these in green and black. My daughter has a sand coloured one, which she looks fabulous in. i have wooly hats for winter, as long as it’s dry.
https://stetson.eu/Gosper-Army-Cap-uk.html
I have a khaki army cap, almost identical in design to this, from an Australian company (name escapes me) – apparently equivalent to spf50.
Also a couple of big brimmed Tilley hats for high summer, flat cap for winter – and a tweed deerstalker for when I’m solving crimes (or doing my famous Dave Pegg tribute…).
One wool flat cap, a couple of scruffy straw hats for hot days, one very nice fedora, a neat straw trilby bought 40 years ago in Corralejo when it was a small fishing village, a smart baseball hat from the Mariposa Grove, a couple of leather stockman hats from Oz, an ear-flap hat with a Lenin badge for icy days and three shemaghs from Jerusalem. Don’t really do hats much, as I have a full head of hair and I just get hat-hair, but a man’s got to have at least a few of them for occasional use.
I have a nice grey thick herringbone po boy cap from the hat shop in York for the winter and a battered straw Panama for the summer. I also have a Mountain Warehouse baseball cap which is cunningly designed to fold to the size of a pack of 20 cigs which I keep in the car as an emergency hat if it turns sunny. Similarly I have a battered (what used to be called) beanie hat in the top box of my motorbike in case the sun comes out when I’m parked up. This all to protect slap head and face which seems to have a predeliction for sun spots and patches of cancerous cells which can eff right off.
I forgot, I also have a classic Tilly – someone brilliant on here told me the knee trick for stretching it back to size. Oh, and a brown felt fedora for winter. How did I end up with so many hats?
It seems the beanie hat of old is now a bush hat. One of these.
T’was Leedsboy: he had the theory, I had the practical experience.
Yay me!
You the man Leeds.
I thought I’d I’d some more travel phez photos.
Here in Italy, Greece, wearing my fjez in the fjords, at the V & A with T Cooper’s fez and at the Taj.
Got to say that is rather cool.
Apart from the I’d I’d which of course should be I’d add.
I found a “dressing up” picture from about 40 years ago. I was going to post it in the dressing up thread – but, given the nature of the titfer, perhaps I’ll just leave it here…
I think the tassel’s at the back…
I can’t wear anything on my head, I look insane if I try.
At a family get-together recently I mentioned that I don’t wear beanies/hats, “because my head is deformed”, and my brother cried out “Me too!” and high-five’d me. Our head shapes don’t look weird uncovered, but as soon as we put something on our heads, we suddenly look grotesque.
Having said that; I haven’t tried every kind of hat known to (wo-)men, because since childhood (and without looking in a mirror to realise that they don’t suit me) I’ve always hated wearing anything on my head.
As a small child, forced to wear some ugly knitted beanie in winter, I’d take it off at the end of our garden, hide it in a snow pile and leave it there until I got back home from school. Then I’d pull it out of the snow, shake off the snow and put it on – all to avoid yet another argument with my mum. My head is very warm, and wearing a beanie makes my scalp sweat, even in minus 30!
I wore sun hats as a baby, of course, but as a grown-up I prefer sitting in the shade anyway, and in extreme circumstances I’ve brought a thin shawl to hang over my head, like a tent.
There was a short time in the early 80s when it suddenly was very cool for girls to wear a Fedora (or similar) and waistcoats. I did have a gorgeous embroidered second-hand waistcoat, but I had to leave the hats for my friends to look stylish in!
I’m with you @locust
I just look like a squished Mr Magoo.
This tatty looking think was once an outback style hat from the Henschel Hat Company. But it’s given me twenty five years of sterling service under some ferocious Spanish sun. Whether I’m heading down bramble infested ravines or climbing to the tops of olive trees, I rarely leave the house without it. The brown leather drawstring is long gone. It is a bit bulky so I have back-up bucket and floppy hats for more leisurely senderismo. Never been keen on the baseball cap with regards to style or function. Yes, shade is provided at the front and there is protection on top of the bonce. But the neck is left cruelly exposed.
Some more hat history:
Kid: cub cap. Also an MCFC beanie snatched from my head by some oik while standing on Windy Corner of the Kippax during a freezing night game against Sunderland some time around 1977. Tueart scored an early penalty (the only goal) that I missed owing to difficulty getting into the ground. Towards the end of the game this kid was walking out and as he passed me he just yanked the hat off my head. A mild altercation ensued during which the girl I was with (actually my babysitter) grabbed the kid and got the hat back. Said hat still lives in my drawer at home and has become synonymous with that night.
Adolescent/young adult: trilby and mullet combo. Saw China Crisis on The Tube and liked the look. Foolish.
Mid 20’s: long hair and a Steve Hillage style beanie to maintain some semblance of order on windy days.
30’s: pimping just got easier in a generously proportioned newsboy from JJ Hats, New York.
As I mentioned on the coat hook thread, I really liked the hats Dylan wore on screen in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Late western styles, mostly with flat wide brims, and often taller than expected crowns. Wouldn’t mind something similar to replace the ageing Henschel for campo work, but they seem either difficult to track down or prohibitively expensive.
Actually, the website that @davebigpicture linked to above, has something not too far off what I’m thinking about. Tempted.
https://stetson.eu/Lannover-Wool-Hat-uk.html
Baseball caps are traumatic because I always have to adjust the strap at the back to its highest setting, which reminds me that I have a very big head. They also offer no protection to the back of the neck. Nape? Nope! I also worry about looking like Jonathan King.
I have a wide-brimmed Australian brown leather hat which throws more shade than Joan Rivers at a Pia Zadora convention.
Also very good when it rains. There should be a catch-all phrase for this, but let me try to explain. You know when you see a duck go into the water and then come back up again…and then you notice how the water doesn’t seem to get the duck wet? Well, it’s like that.
You’ve not got the baseball cap thought through. I once saw someone wearing two one forward and one back thus offering shade to the front and the back. Mind you he looked like an idiot.
In my experience baseball caps reduce the wearer’s IQ by 50%, and by a further 50% of that if worn backwards. Goodness knows what damage that poor soul was doing to his last shreds of executive function.
Why do people wear them backwards? I don’t mean for nape protection – but is it meant to be a sign the wearer is a rebel, an iconoclast, a man who laughs at convention etc?
My next door neighbour wears one backwards. In his case it’s an entirely accurate indicator that he’s a dickhead. He was drunkenly shouting over the music in his garden at 2am today, which is entirely in character (whether he was wearing the cap or not), which is why we didn’t bother warning him that the team replacing our soffits and guttering were planning to start at 7am.
My son used to occasionally wear one backwards when he was a teenager. I cured him of this by constantly asking where he got caps with the peak at the back. He’s not a dickhead btw, just young.
Like this, you mean?
How odd I’d posted a picture of Neil wearing that duck to a friend’s page today.
Anyway here’s another fez fotograf taken 11 years ago yesterday at the after party for our wedding. There’s a picture of a friend wearing a solar topped brandishing a giant courgette but I’ll spare you that.
I have to adjust the other way as my head is small.
Wanted to get a Panama or straw Trilby for holiday, ended up finding on that fitted in the kids section.
What you need is a proper team baseball cap. If you go into any MLB club shop (and, many, if not all MiLB shops) you will find a huge wall of hats with the hat size marked. Pick th eone that fits. No adjustment necessary (or indeed possible!)
On holiday last year in Santorini I wore my team Alinghi* baseball cap.
* Swiss yachting team
I like a hat. I have a few baseball caps (a Carhartt trucker, a Leeds Smiley badge one and a Gant one which my daughter appears to favour.). I have a couple of scruffy ones of dog walks as well.
I have a summer Tilley and a wool winter Tilley. Both excellent. And I have a Panama hat which I like but am convinced makes me look a bit of a nob.
Annoyingly, there are some hats I’d love to be able to wear, but having less hair these days (or ‘taking longer and longer to wash my face’ as Harry Hill put it), they would look weird on me. A short western-style top hat looks ace if you have Tom Petty-length hair. If you have (necessarily) shorter hair, you look like a doorman. I have a very nice black fedora for the cold weather, but still worry it makes me look like that German bloke who does dodgy stuff with corpses.
Hot weather is better. I have a battered straw cowboy hat for barbecue time, inspired by a photo of Michael Stipe circa 1991, plus a nice trucker hat found in a charity shop. Harris tweed baggy cap for autumn, which I bought long before Peaky Blinders was on, thank you very much…
I have a battered straw planter / cowboy hat I like to think Lowell George might have worn. “Might” working hard there.
This is the place to ask, among friends. Where do we stand on bandanas? I have quite a collection of colours plus a few tube style ones originally bought for skiing. I rather like them, though I’m a sucker for paisley (first generation though, Squiggle fans). There’s always a little voice in my ear though, saying “But you’re not Little Steven”.
This on a motorbike trip in Wales.
To be fair, it must be a challenge to wear a hat on top of a skid lid.
I have lots of them but I only wear them around my neck.
Ah the “maillot vert,”
Serait-ce autre chose mon ami?
Ou est la plume de ma tante?
Avec le singe est dans l’arbre
Mais le chat est sur la table
Mais.
To bring this to a circular conclusion.
Très distinguished. I do that too when riding said bike. Cotton in summer, fleece snood in winter. I learned not to leave the neck open after a wasp got in my jacket and stung me several times.
Hope you stopped off for a bacon sarnie and a cuppa at the greasy spoon hut in the car park at Abergavenny? Lots of bikes there on a Sunday morning.
I have three hats on steady rotation:
Akubra for smarter occasions
Tilley for general outdoors – one for sunshine and one for rain.
A a battered old Scottish Rugby ball cap that is faded to hell, but fits wonderfully well now.
Never wore hats until my hair began to go. Even then it wasn’t a vanity thing, but because my aged dad is spending his final years having regular appointments to remove the cancerous growths from the top of his head, and I have no wish to do the same a few decades from now. Now I feel naked if I leave the house without it.
Took me ages to find something suitable because I have a very large skull, any hat that says ‘one size fits all’ is lying, and I can’t stand baseball caps. Finally settled on an inexpensive trekking cap from Decathlon which fits beautifully and doesn’t have a ridiculously long brim, liked it so much that I’ve got 3 more in a drawer in case they ever discontinue it. It’s also impacted on the rest of what I wear, as it looks vaguely ridiculous with any semi-formal outfit.
I don’t suit hats but now don’t care, as they are better look than the strip of scarlet sunburn at the hairline, at the first sunbeam of the summer. Never toughens up as it is a new strip every year, each year a step further back.
I generally wear a hat between the front door and the car, take it off and chuck it on the dashboard, and then forget to put it back on when I get to wherever I’m going. I have a collection of hats for this purpose – slouch, felt, baseball, Bunnings etc. Because of my noble dome and the sun, I should always wear a hat, but because I’ve only been in Oz for 11 years I figure something else will carry me off before I have to worry about it.
The only hat I wear regularly is this one, bought in a charity shop, which I wear for care home gigs with my little Fiddle Faddle band.
I don’t think I’ve ever worn or owned a hat, other than a school cap in the ’60s. And, as a native of NE England, I am prohibited from carrying an umbrella. I did wear a cravat recently, for my father in law’s funeral. He was known for his collection of them, so a few of us wore them on the day.
I only wear a hat out of weather based and hair coverage necessity. I hate them. I’ll take it off as soon as possible. The only silver lining is that, due to wearing a woolie hat in the winter, I now have warm ears as well!
If I forget my hat, I will not borrow one. It makes me shudder just thinking of it and don’t (even in jest) try mine on!
Having eschewed the titfer for may years as I could never find one I felt comfortable wearing, in the last 18 months or so I have purchased a very nice tweed flat cap that I wear except when it’s too warm and a very lightweight Aussie-style hat (not unlike Mr Hairnet’s earlier but one you can fix up the sides should you feel the need) for when it’s sunny to protect the bald bonce. If it’s really raining I’ve also got a Kangaroo leather hat that keeps the rain off really nicely. No corks!
Must be an age thing.
I love hats, and although I’m never 100% sure if they always suit me I give much less of a shit than I used to. As a result it’s rare that I leave the house without one, usually a baker boy 8 panel cap or a very bendable pork pie hat. They keep me warm in the winter and save me from sunstroke in the summer, which I am very prone to as I can’t bear the heat, or getting too hot. Cotton Stetson caps are a bit expensive, but are great for summer.
On a busy long haul flight, an American man with a “voice that carried” had his nice-looking hat laid down in its own space in the overhead locker. Enter young bloke with rucksack picks up hat, throws his rucksack in and then puts the hat back on top.
The hat man went ballistic – arguing that “no one touches” his hat and he had every right to use this baggage space purely for his hat.
I’m with the young rucksack bloke. Expecting people to respect your hat and give it space is ridiculous.
Similar thing happened to me on a Ryanair flight when I had the audacity to move a guy’s leather jacket that was taking up the only remaining overhead locker space for my carry-on. I moved his jacket – under the instruction of the cabin crew, I might add – inserted my case, and then carefully replaced the jacket. The jacket’s owner, sitting diagonally opposite seemed inexplicably upset by this and gave me a tirade of abuse, while cabin staff backed away meekly. This same guy gave me the stare the whole flight. After getting off the plane and out of the airport I had to wait for a courtesy bus to pick up my car. There was only one other person waiting for the bus. Can you guess who it was?
I had a real aversion to hats until the hair started to disappear. Still find it a bit weird wearing one, but slowly getting used to it.
I have a couple of Tilleys for the summer. One has such a wide brim that we call it my Rapids Johnson hat, although checking on Google I see his hat wasn’t as huge as I remember. Also several caps, generally used for birding and going to the footy when the sun is shining, and a few beanies – mostly for birding and going to the footy when it’s cold.
Like many who have commented already, I only started wearing hats when my natural bonce covering started to disappear. A Harris Tweed cap for chilly days, a wooly hat for the perishing cold ones, and a Panama for the sun. I am told that I quite suit a hat, so happy to wear one.
I did buy a leather one in a sale, but its never worked. It is far too stiff and feels like I’m wearing cardboard.