One word…
Beret.
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Nah. I understand why we’ve retired the toothbrush mustache…
(sorry George), and many practical considerations recommend we don’t bring back the stovepipe top hat…
(no offense, Mr President), but the fedora is really just too damned useful to throw out altogether, and the sins of its recent PUA douchebag wearers, manifold as they may be, aren’t really representative of fedora wearers who have worn fedoras (and properly respected women) for a pretty long time (albeit not as long as Burroughs).
I mean, it kinda took Hitler to permanently kill off the popularity of the toothbrush mustache. On those rare occasions when I need to wear a hat to shade my head or shelter my spectacles from raindrops, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna resort to a ballcap like some unimaginative Dodgers fan, or mount a 10-gallon cowboy hat on my melon like the redneck shitkickers I grew up with who couldn’t understand why they were unfortunate enough to be born in California with all its liberals and Mexicans and couldn’t wait to haul stakes for Texas so’s they could start earnin’ some respectagoddamnbility.
I won’t wear a bucket hat. I don’t fish, and look what happens to wearers of bucket hats.
Not good things.
I won’t wear a straw boater unless I’m issued a cane and copious tapdancing lessons.
Nah, this is a reasonably close approximation of my rainy-day hat, which I picked up at a truck stop in Oklahoma around 20 years ago (though mine is pretty beat-up now):
I’m not about to give it up, until a new Hitler starts adopting it as his headgear of choice.
Also, I don’t know why bell-bottom jeans went out of fashion for men when I was, like, nine and never came back (although women got to wear them again sometime in the mid 90s). I think Cliff Burton was the last public personage to wear them.
I’m gonna sew me up a pair and bring 'em back! I miss those so much!
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My Ex-wife worked at a restaurant that his - uh - assistant used to come in to all the time. He said someday he would bring William in for coffee and he did.
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When I was a kid, rather a long time ago, old guys wore hats, usually fedora shaped if they were dressed up, and they looked pretty good even if they were mostly a 30s/40s leftover style. (Since I was a kid then, I have no idea if “old” meant 60 or 30.) When I got to be older, and had male pattern baldness by the time I was 30, I started wearing hats, usually caps, and especially after moving to San Francisco area where the winters are (supposed to be) rainy, fedoras were really comfortable most of the year, and were more widely available after Willie Brown became mayor, as opposed to just cowboy-hat shaped wide-brim hats. Then later, the hipsters started wearing their trilbies and pork-pies and other hats with inadequate brims, but whatever.
And yeah, the PUA misogynists started wearing them to show off, and to pretend to be cool and hope to get attention by tipping their hats at women, and that young woman put out her fedora-hating rant that spread across the internet, and those of us who wear fedoras because they’re comfortable hats are supposed to stop wearing them because of that? F*** you, punks, get off my lawn.
I do also have lots of random baseball hats, either from computer vendors or acquired when I was somewhere and needed a hat, and a fishing-geezer hat also acquired because that’s what was around when I needed one. (If I want to wear a really cool hat, there’s the collapsing top-hat my wife got me as a present back when we were doing lots of Victorian dancing, but that mainly comes out at cons or when I was dressed as the Monopoly moneybags guy for Halloween.)
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tips
I feel bad for involving Pterry in this. I’m a little surprised that TF2 hasn’t surfaced yet…
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I like a nice Barmah ‘light & greasy’ foldaway or equivalent. Good rain and UV protection, disappears into a small pouch if you don’t need it. Not douchey. Not exactly stylish, but pretty practical.
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Sun. NZ sunlight is scary intense in summer as we still have an ozone hole right over us. I don’t give a crap what it looks like, if I could find a sombrero I’d wear it!
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Aaaaaaawwwwkwaaaaarrrrddddddd…
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There is no “back”. Fashions don’t live in some distant land where they cannot be accessed. You need to make them relevant now yourself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it.
And even then. If something is practical, it does not matter if Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao all adopted that - it stays the same practical. And if some ideopolice/fashion cops insist on putting some meaning there, they - and the society they insist on being self-appointed to represent - deserve all the middle fingers they can get.
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As it happens, one of the hats I routinely wear is a tweed flat cap from Abercombie & Fitch. However, I inherited it from my grandfather who ,I’m pretty sure bought it when the company catered to hunters and sportsmen instead of hipsters.
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Ambercrombie has never, and will never cater to hipsters. For at least 20 years they’ve been the go to brand for the prototypical white jocks and yuppies. Pretty much anathema for the typical American hipster. If you want to see a brand that caters to hipsters look no further than American Apparel. Pornographic advertising, ironic mustaches, and unitards billed with a politicized “we’re saving American manufacturing” pseudo-movement.
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If Hugo Boss can be forgiven, I’m sure the fedora and other maligned apparel could be more easily rehabilitated … 
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I look ridiculous in any hat, as every one I have ever tried on makes me look like I’m wearing one of those tiny bowler hats sported in South America. I have a similar problem with crash helmets when offered a lift anywhere on a bike (have to put them on the top of my head & bang them against a wall til they’re over my ears). My brothers & I all have very robust skulls. My poor mother…
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A major function of clothing, for millenia at least, has been to communicate social messages about the wearer. I can understand complaining about someone asserting a social meaning to a type of clothing that you don’t want to have that meaning, because you want it to have a different meaning, or you favor it for other reasons. But arguing that clothing has no social meaning, or should not, seems oddly naive to me.
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Lost my hair in my 20’s so I’ve been wearing a fedora or medium brim pork pie for decades now. Newsboys and driving caps just remind me of the 70’s d-bags who wore them thanks to Brian Johnson.
I suppose I’ll just keep wearing them and accept the admonishment.
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Sun - I’m in Texas, have no hair, and sunburn at the drop of a hat.
And now that I’ve finally found unpacked it here’s a photo.
I made the band and bow from a piece of sheepskin suede I got off of eBay.*
* By the way if you ever need leather for a project eBay is a spectacular resource. Sheep, goat, pig, and deer in all kinds of colors, top grain and suede.
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I often remind folks I can’t be a hipster, I bought this stuff new.
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