How do folks react to your hat wearing?

Frunobulax said:

When my wife was finishing her degree in an adult night school, she was doing a paper on interracial relationships. You can imagine how her search experience was the first time out.



Free drinks for wearing a hat? Please share name and location of club.



A couple of weeks ago in the grocery, I encountered an individual who was covered head-to-toe in purple. A long purple coat, purple gaiter, and wide brim purple fedora. I thought I had encountered Lamont Cranston. Wish I would have taken a pic, but it would have been too obvious.

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It was probably Huggy Bear.

hatsRme said:

A proper hat is tremendously empowering. I’ve noted that forever, more so as a younger person.

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Very true, from what I'm finding. Much more in this hat already than my former, more modest fedora. Two fellows went out of their way to hold the door for me the other night, and my friends said it looked fantastic, as did a girl at the bar who approached me specifically to tell me so.

Frunobulax said:

Free drinks for wearing a hat? Please share name and location of club.

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Haha, it was a soft drink and a gas station convenience store, but still, hey.

I was wearing my silverbelly Campdraft with a teardrop crown and front pinch bash. A kid who was five said I was wearing a sheriff’s hat!

Frunobulax said:

A couple of weeks ago in the grocery, I encountered an individual who was covered head-to-toe in purple. A long purple coat, purple gaiter, and wide brim purple fedora. I thought I had encountered Lamont Cranston. Wish I would have taken a pic, but it would have been too obvious.

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I’m more than a little disappointed you didn’t get a selfie with him. Dressing as you’ve described, I’m sure he’d be tickled pink (or light purple).

The clerk at the checkout of our Aldi grocery says to me today...

“I love ALL your your hats”

As I fumbled to give my thanks... she then turns to my wife and says

“He wears a different hat every day he comes. They are all so nice”

To which my wife replies... “Yes.. he has a LOT”. So as to say... ‘don’t encourage him’


I felt so @GHT for a fleeting moment.

Blare said:

The clerk at the checkout of our Aldi grocery says to me today...

“I love ALL your your hats”

As I fumbled to give my thanks... she then turns to my wife and says

“He wears a different hat every day he comes. They are all so nice”

To which my wife replies... “Yes.. he has a LOT”. So as to say... ‘don’t encourage him’


I felt so @GHT for a fleeting moment.

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So a la @GHT, what was your witty response?

Haha, excellent, Joe. Our wives understand us pretty well. Mine just rolls here eyes anytime she sees me with a 12x12x12 box in my hands!

Blare said:

The clerk at the checkout of our Aldi grocery says to me today...

“I love ALL your your hats”

As I fumbled to give my thanks... she then turns to my wife and says

“He wears a different hat every day he comes. They are all so nice”

To which my wife replies... “Yes.. he has a LOT”. So as to say... ‘don’t encourage him’


I felt so @GHT for a fleeting moment.

Click to expand...

Blare said:

The clerk at the checkout of our Aldi grocery says to me today...

“I love ALL your your hats”

As I fumbled to give my thanks... she then turns to my wife and says

“He wears a different hat every day he comes. They are all so nice”

To which my wife replies... “Yes.. he has a LOT”. So as to say... ‘don’t encourage him’


I felt so @GHT for a fleeting moment.

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Picking up on the vibes, I doffed my hat to you sir. It does come to something when the highlight of the week is the supermarket shop.

hatsRme said:

I’m more than a little disappointed you didn’t get a selfie with him. Dressing as you’ve described, I’m sure he’d be tickled pink (or light purple).

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I got the impression the head-to-toe covering was as much of a defensive mechanism than anything. I'm also not certain if "Lamont" was male or female.

TheOldFashioned said:

So a la @GHT, what was your witty response?

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I’m afraid I was found lacking in that aspect.

Rmccamey said:

Haha, excellent, Joe. Our wives understand us pretty well. Mine just rolls here eyes anytime she sees me with a 12x12x12 box in my hands!

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I know that feeling all too well

GHT said:

Picking up on the vibes, I doffed my hat to you sir. It does come to something when the highlight of the week is the supermarket shop.

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How very true

While attending a milestone family celebration in another state, my wife and I had a few moments to browse a local antique store (didn’t find any hats, only two empty boxes). A friendly local gentleman wearing bib overalls commented on my hat, and we exchanged pleasantries. He continued talking, telling me that all the local farmers used to wear hats like mine, and they called it the LBJ hat. He said he used to clean and block them. He had worked at what must have been a very well-known hat/boot store, and said he still had all his equipment and missed doing that work. He invited me to bring my hat by and he would clean it. Since I live several hundred miles away, I told him I appreciate that, and actually, I will be visiting again and I might just bring an extra hat that needs some work.

Perhaps he flew to Texas! I had a similar older gentleman in bib overalls and wearing a black cowboy hat comment on my Knox Superfine homburg yesterday in the hardware store. "I really like your hat", he said.

Snowman said:

While attending a milestone family celebration in another state, my wife and I had a few moments to browse a local antique store (didn’t find any hats, only two empty boxes). A friendly local gentleman wearing bib overalls commented on my hat, and we exchanged pleasantries. He continued talking, telling me that all the local farmers used to wear hats like mine, and they called it the LBJ hat. He said he used to clean and block them. He had worked at what must have been a very well-known hat/boot store, and said he still had all his equipment and missed doing that work. He invited me to bring my hat by and he would clean it. Since I live several hundred miles away, I told him I appreciate that, and actually, I will be visiting again and I might just bring an extra hat that needs some work.
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Rmccamey said:

Perhaps he flew to Texas! I had a similar older gentleman in bib overalls and wearing a black cowboy hat comment on my Knox Superfine homburg yesterday in the hardware store. "I really like your hat", he said.


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It would be difficult not to make an admiring comment for such a fine hat, Randy!

Thank you, sir. Yours looks NOS itself!

Snowman said:

It would be difficult not to make an admiring comment for such a fine hat, Randy!

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For the last couple of years I have been writing letters to my former neighbour. She's in her nineties now and the loss of her husband of seventy years hit her hard. We have settled into a loose routine of a letter a month, I can write at some length as most of you know, on and on about the smallest detail. In the last letter I reassured the lady that we have truly had our first vaccine for Covid 19, in doing so I remembered a small detail that I just had to share.

At first the inoculation invitation didn't start too well. I was offered to attend a choice of two venues. A football stadium or a racecourse, both of which were an eighty mile drive away. The invitation also said that our own doctor will be in touch in due course, so we waited and that is what happened. We were to attend a non emergency hospital just ten miles from home. It was to be on a Saturday morning at half eleven.

It might have been a less auspicious start with those long distance venues but this local hospital really had their act together. A marquee had been set up in the car park where we had to register and prove who we were, then on in line with others to the vaccination area. It was all so slick. A nurse summoned us, asked if we were together and sent us into one of many cubicles. There a doctor looked at us, smiled and said. "Oh my, not quite top hat and tails, but impressive all the same." I took my blazer off and then as I unclipped the left hand cuff-link the doctor recognised the Orient Express logo. "You've been on the Orient Express," he said, adding, "my bride and I did that on our honeymoon." "Dressed the part, I hope," I asked. "Oh yes," he replied, "but I'm afraid, no hat." "No hat!" Exclaimed my missus, "I'm surprised that they let you on." Cue much laughter. The doctor in the adjacent cubicle put his head around the door. "What's the joke?" He asked, "his hat," said our doctor. "It's a fine hat," said the new doctor, "a fedora, I think." "You're a gentleman Sir," I replied. "Don't tell him that," said our doctor, he might want more money." Cue even more laughter.

We had our injections, said our thanks and left the cubicle, leaving the doctors still laughing and others who were coming and going, looking perplexed at all the jollity. Covid inoculations, it's been the best day out of the year.

What a wonderful day we had yesterday. A hog roast at a country inn, the couple who run the place are getting married in August, but for now they are getting into some semblance of normality.

The hospitality section of the economy has really suffered and many a pub and restaurant have gone to the wall. But our friends have survived and there we were yesterday enjoying a lunch that we didn't have to cook ourselves.

Dressed as we do, a fellow diner said: "you two have just got to have arrived in that vintage MG." "Of course," replied my wife, as she headed off to "powder her nose." The fellow was curious about my hat, so I took it off and handed it to him. Looking inside he saw the name: Gamboa.

After saying how surprised he was, at the strength of a straw hat, he handed it back and thanked me. A few minutes later he was back. "I've just looked up Gamboa," he said, "I can't believe how much they cost," "not cheap,are they?" I replied. "Honestly," he answered, "I thought that straw hats were two a penny." "Well you live and learn," said my wife, as she returned to her seat. "And some," the fellow said, still shaking his head in disbelief. There was no point explaining the amount of labour that goes into straw hat production.

A few pages back someone mentioned an anti-fedora sentiment?
This one guy at work didn't think I could hear him and he said to someone else, "Here comes Steve with his hat" so I walked up and said "Here's Steve and here's my hat!"
I figure the locals aren't dressing to please me so why should I worry about them?
Wear what you like which, of course, would include a real hat.

As I've said before, most men would like to wear a hat but are afraid they will be laughed at. I can't say how many times I've been told that my hat really looked nice but they couldn't pull it off, of course I assure them that they could wear a hat and enjoy it .