Got Hat?

 I’m not ambivalent about hats.  I wear one most of the time, even in the house, even to bed.  We’ve got close to nine months of winter ‘round here and I like a warm head.  Thinning hair is likely contributing but I’ve been like this since I was a little kid.  A hat makes me feel whole. 

My father never left the house with a hat and almost always a proper one.  I still have one of his Stetsons along with the original box, unfortunately far too small for my long oval, and I’d wager that this particular example was among his last purchases, circa 1960.   He wore it until he passed in ’99.  He preferred a short brim trilby, as I do.  He had a collection of fedoras too and in his day bore a stunning resemblance to the great David Niven.  Has anyone ever wore a hat better than Niven?

We’re easterners, New York City boys from Jersey, and we don’t do cowboy but nowadays it’s hard, really hard to wear a hat that isn’t baseball or beanie.  Hats are almost as weird as bowties though, thank goodness, not nearly as political.  I can get with Moynihan and Simon of Illinois---remember him?  But more recent examples of bow ties and blazers make for defamation.  As I recall Daniel Patrick preferred a tweed bucket but we’ll save that for another day.

 

For a guy who likes to write about style and culture, who even occasionally posts a fit and shamelessly loves good clothes, boots, and leathers, I prefer not to make much show.  If these days you pay even the slightest attention to your appearance out in the world, you may well draw a look or a comment.  

In the golden age of men’s hats, say between ever and 1961, not only did everyone wear one, everyone wore it his own way.  Just how you wanted to make your statement involved choices within well-understood boundaries.  In contrast to a trilby, a fedora usually has a wider brim, takes up more real estate both on your head and in your mind.  I wish I were a millionth as cool as Gregory Peck, but what guy doesn’t?  I can only do a true fedora on a particularly fedoraish day, unlike Mr Peck who needed no occasion.

 

I’m also ambivalent about personal social media attention though I do love my stuff and very much want those who make and sell nice things for a living to flourish.  I like to see how other fellas pull themselves together and how they pull it off---we live in a culture of spectacle and no small degree of superficiality but the light of those shadows also offers a greater openness to share and to discover others with simpatico style and interests.  If you’re looking to remain more unseen, a good hat is not the way to go.

 

You can be a private person, asocial even misanthropic, and still find joy in sartorial narratives that offer something to love about things that humans make.  I have the need to contribute to your own inner sense of story.  Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves?  I tell mine not only in profession and interests but in styles that complement and collide, and so allow me to embrace my contradictions.  I live in multiple worlds not all of which get along.  So instead of seeking harmony, I use style to enforce an inner ceasefire, that way each circumstance creates its own meaning.  Enter the hat again: never a signal of neutrality but almost always a statement of purpose.  I’m not reconciled with this statement of fact but that’s part of the hat price.  

 I think we all have on-duty and off-duty styles but mine don’t need to vary much and most of what I choose works either way.  Even in my profession it’s possible one day to be dweeby old Ivy professor and the next to wear heritage selvedge and boots and…a hat---if students notice they don’t say and colleagues, well, I doubt notice me anymore most care to notice themselves.  In fact, Indy and Henry long pulled this off.

We live in the age of sartorial free for all, for better and largely for worse.  Hats are definitely so ‘for worse’ that it’s close to impossible to wear one with any style that doesn’t signal costume, cult, uniform, fandom, or just get up.  Darn shame that it’s come to this.  Most hats are as bad as the rest of the clothes and positively horrible footwear that the majority of men in America wear.

 

So last year after digging up some very old photos of the old man and seeing again how naturally, effortlessly, normally he wore the regulation hats of his era, I thought again about my hat issues.  

I like the McQueen watch and Dadhat baseball caps soft on structure, low on message, but I also dig a good beret and a traditional men’s hat, the sort that went out with JFK and never came back.  When you wear a trilby or fedora it’s nothing like being a cowboy though I’d venture to say most guys in cowboy hats aren’t likely cowboys, and that includes boots and belts.  I got nothing against that look because the closest I ever got to horses growing up was outside Madison Square Garden with mounted cops keeping the peace.  You can also look downright religious in a fedora and if that’s your jam I say carry on, brother, but I’m looking only to enjoy a style and a warm noggin.  Not only is it hard to wear a traditional hat, I’ve got prerequisite boundary issues.

 

Over the past I recharged my hat campaign with some Brit-style flat waxed, a bucket or two with some swagger, and even a Chindit bush. Only real Aussies get to do the one-side-up thing, as we all know.  You can get a really nice bespoke Chindit these days and that sayin’ something.

 

When I mustered the cheek to go for yet another trilby I soon discovered that even the better ones from Japanese Amekaji retailers just didn’t fit quite right.  I could always feel a pinch.  Then I tore out the lining of a perfectly mediocre Stetson I had from the ‘80s to do my best imitation of Terrence Aloysius "Slip" Mahoney.  That’s cool and who doesn’t love a beatup old hat that stays on the right side of hobo and street kid from the 30s.

I like the pork-pie too, Mingus and Monk style, but that’s for late nights and dim lights. Those cats didn’thave to do anything to be cool but be.

My not-do-good fitting trilbys however revived in me enough temerity to want a real one---and that would be both in quality and fit.  Fit is king when a good fit is an everyday aspiration.  I’d been spying Optimo Hat Company out of Chicago for quite a long time and there’s no doubt that this is a commitment (aka costs a bundle).  Hamlet could not have been more conflicted.

I’m resigned to the fact that The Good Stuff usually don’t come easy (aka costs a bundle) and that something like this doesn’t usually turn up second hand as a sizing error, the way you can find a leather jacket or a pair of expensive jeans.

 

An Optimo is the kind of thing you get right and keep unto death.  It took many nights looking too long at their website before I could finally make the phone call for an appointment.  I wasn’t going to go there unless I was almost ready. It’s just wrong to waste someone’s time with your late night interweb monomanias unless you’re prepared to deliver on your end.

 

My interview with Optimo began with a soft tailor’s tape.   It took Brady about five seconds to identify both my size and head shape.  I had never before understood head shape but I have always known that my off-the-rack trilbys and lined fedoras never fit even when they sorta’ size-fitted.  “You’re a long oval,” he said.  And I thought, “this is what I have never known before…”  As important as the actual size of your head is its shape.  If you get this wrong nothing will ever feel right.  Figuring out your size: easy.  Knowing your head shape---round, long oval, etc.---that is something you gots to know. 

We discussed style and color, and I wanted something that reminded me of those long, perfect nights at The Village Vanguard in the late 1970s.

 

We settled on Optimo’s Jazz style called the Rush Street, which they describe as “Fedora and porkpie hybrid with a low teardrop crown. Sharp, clean lines are a modern approach to the hat of the jazz era.”  That about captures it for me.  I’d originally thought about a true Pork Pie, and Optimo’s Blue Note captures Monk at the piano just right.  Their Belmont model is a wider brim jazz style pork pie but with traditional hats even a little more brim ends up being quite a bit more.   The overall circumference of a hat increases exponentially with even half a centimeter more brim.  Trust me on this one.  Brim size changes the character of a hat manifestly.  Think twice (or more) about what you want to achieve.  

Once the matter of model, size, and color was solved, all I had to do was lay down my Jacksons and wait.

My Optimo Rush Street was made in silver beaver fur, a relatively light weight, and in a dark blue that they call lapis.  It’s definitely blue, not black, which was important to me but it’s plenty dark enough to meld into the night.  The blue works with black or brown leather jackets, it’s formal enough for a dress up and cool enough for morning pyjamas.  It’s East Side Kid Meets Monk at the Blue Note.  Well, I’m not that cool but the hat is.