How did you start wearing hats?

Matt Deckard · Jan 31, 2006

I think this has been tread on before, though no harm in doing it again.

What drew you to dress hats?

I used to say it was the Untouchables with Kevin Costner, though with more thought and reflection I now see that

Superman: The nerdy Clark Kent Christopher Reeve played in Superman had a very big part to do with why I like the emotion or lack of that goes with a hat. It just completed his outfit in the first movie... it was his business disguise.

The Untouchables: Costner with his hat and how it was worn was another one that drew me in. He wasn't the tough guy... he was the reluctant hero defending good people... he was the everyday kind of guy who knew that being good and honest overshadowed those that believed the ends justify the means. He too fought for truth and justice.

Raiders of the lost Ark: The grey hat in this movie, the one on the steps of the federal building, the one on the sea plane... That high crown and blue suit combo... that's my favorite look, "bureaucratic fools!"

Every Movie in which James Stewart wore a hat: I have nothing more to say.

vespasian · Jan 31, 2006

None of the above. I used to work for an airline and being a bit of a language nut I used to go out into the cuds when the other crew were lying by the pool. Went for some pretty silly holidays bumming around a few warzones and had regular bouts of sunburn etc. Then I walked past a shop in verona, saw a hat and bought it cos it looked good and would do the job. It was a borsalino.

tonyb · Jan 31, 2006

Started in my late teens when I bought a pair of Strats at the Goodwill. I was starting to go bald then, and soon learned that a hat wasn't merely affectation, that there were practical reasons for sporting a lid--such as staying warm and dry in the winter and free of sunburn in the summer. I've never been at all self-conscious about my baldness, by the way. The hat is not to disguise that lack of hair; I wouldn't wear a rug if they were giving them away. Nothing against (most) guys with fake hair. I happen to work with a guy who really does look better in his rug, but it's a high-end one and he spends more on haircuts and his hairpiece's maintenance than I would. I see baldness as an individual trait, like stature or eye color. This modern fashion of wearing one's hair extremely short or even shaved off altogether meets with my approval. Now all those stylin' young men need is a few hats.

Siirous · Jan 31, 2006

When I was 15 I always liked the way mobsters in the movies dressed; I hadn't seen any other period film of that age except the godfather. When I happened to pass a hat store with my father and we went in, and found out a hat that looked great on me was 90 dollars AND made of beaver, I let it drop.

Last September I broke out Road to Perdition to watch again. I was on my laptop at the same time the movie was playing and put a bid on ebay. I got lucky by just happening to bid on a vintage lid without any good FL knowledge.

Now I rarely go hatless, and I feel funny wearing my good old ballcap.

Rob

Big Man · Jan 31, 2006

It was tradition ...

I grew-up in the tail-end of the hat wearing era (1960's). My Dad always wore a hat (grey Dobbs fedora), and even as a youngster, my Sunday dress cloths included a young man's hat.

My Grandfather, who I idolized even though he died before I was born, always wore a hat. As a young man, I did my best to emulate my Grandfather and consequently wore a hat (fedora, or variation thereof) almost all of the time.

So I guess the answer to the question of "how did you start wearing a hat" would be - it was primarily due to tradition.

K.D. Lightner · Jan 31, 2006

Actually, it started with cowboy hats -- I was nuts about cowboy stuff when I was a kid and always had some sort of hat around. My father wore fedoras on dress occasions and people thought he was a cop. When I played cops and robbers, I sometimes borrowed the hat.

I had caps and hats all through my teens and twenties, but did not wear them very much because I felt that, if I wore a hat, I had to act a role in it. Seems weird now, but that is how I felt.

I had a canvas Aussie hat with a side snap, a Spanish bolero hat, and, later a women's white wool fedora, as well as several cowboy hats. And then some wool Eddie Bauer type hats to use when hiking. Finally, in the early 90's, I bought a tan borsalino to wear when I hiked or just went out on the town. It cost $95, which seemed a fortune then.

Liked it so much, I bought a gray one, then found a vintage brown one in an antique store. I began to wear them to work, or when I went out of the house, now I feel weird without one. Then, I bought more, and more and.... well, you know the rest.

karol

Kaleponi Craig · Jan 31, 2006

Back in the day....

It started when I saw Raiders in 1981. That lid just blew me away. It took me 24 years to find the perfect Indy fedora (thanks, Adventurebilt!!), but in the meantime I started getting into Panamas. Have worn them consistently (in the warm months) for about 15 years.

For the last year or so I've been a member here at the 'Lounge' and have really discovered the world of fedoras. Between Art Fawcett, Steve Delk and Ebay there are some great ways to collect some great lids..KC

Not-Bogart13 · Jan 31, 2006

Make Believe

I don't know when it started, but I was very young. Not more than 5 years old. I'm guessing that TV and movies created an association between what people wore and who they were. Since being an elementary school student didn't pay very well

I couldn't wear costumes in my childhood make believe games, but hats were much easier to come by. I could be 10 different people with just five hats! Two baseball caps at once, one back, one forward, and I was Sherlock Holmes! A green helmet and a blue helmet and I could be two different army guys. I had a pilots cap from Eastern Airlines, which was good for a pilot, but I could pin or tape any number of badges and such over the patch to be all sorts of things. My list went on and on. I even learned a few tricks from Red Skelton to reshape softer hats based on who I was supposed to be.

And then came Indiana Jones and Mike Hammer (Stacey Keach). Hats went from just tools of imagination to something cool even when I wasn't playing. When my father realized my interest, he encouraged me to see more movies with fedora and western hats, and bought me what he could find. Before I knew it, we were both wearing hats, and games had nothing to do with it. So I guess I've been a hat-wearer all my life, even though nobody around me was. I found out much later that my father had been a big hat nut when he was in his teens and twenties. Guess it must be in the genes!

Mr. Rover · Jan 31, 2006

It started when I was 13....

First it was Raiders- the brim, the crown, the look. That sense of adventure summed up in a hat was just what I wanted. I found myself at Club Obi-Wan learning the ropes. It's a good place for a youngster to start out learning about hats- ribbons, brim widths and curls, crown height, the works.
You leave that place knowing what to look for in a decent hat. Got an Akubra Federation.
Next, I found myself here at the Fedora Lounge and that opened up my eyes to all sorts of other hats. Teardrops and C-crowns are quite frowned upon at COW, but now my favorite hats wouldn't be the same without one.
I now have about 6 hats, 2 of which I rotate regularly.
My hat idols now are Bogart, James Stewart (my Whippet looks like his hat in Philadelphia Story), Indiana Jones, Clark Kent (Flesicher cartoons), and William Powell.

ray

50 Gold · Jan 31, 2006

I was never much of a "hat guy" until recently. I happened to meet an old acquaintance, he was wearing a sand color blazer and a "ultra" fino Panama Fedora. Something about the dapper look he conveyed stayed with me and I finally figured out it was the hat. It was like completion of a persona. After perusing the choices in some local men's shops, I and my better half decided I looked good in a fedora. Well, guess what I got for Christmas?

Raindog · Jan 31, 2006

I've been wracking my brains trying to remember what started it off.
I've had selections of hats come and go all my life. Every time they got given away or lost I regretted it.
Then a few months back something made me look into fur felt. Damned interesting how they make it. This made me determined to find a nice fedora. Did a search and found the Lounge.
Then discovered C.O.W and joined that, which sparked off my interest again in the Indiana Jones movies and "The Hat".
Now I'm collecting Bogart films and am hooked on the old style completely! People just had such style and attitude. It makes me feel good to wear my hats, somehow giving me more confidence than wearing my woolly hat or going bare headed.
I also now realise the protection offered from sun and rain etc. I can't go back to being bare headed now.
Interesting how the movies have affected a lot of members. The first hat I ever wanted from a film was Clint Eastwoods in the Spaghetti westerns. Next was probably Popeye Doyles in the French Connection...Still haven't got that one....
Happy Hat histories folks....

Jeff.

Quigley Brown · Jan 31, 2006

I was working as a photographer for a newspaper back in Iowa about 15 years ago and started dating this girl who owned a vintage clothes store....she gave me a good discount.

jamespowers · Jan 31, 2006

My grandfather got me interested in it when I was probably four years old. He had several Whippets and at a size 6 7/8 they nearly fit perfectly then! After he passed on not long after that, all of his hats disappered except one---a gray Whippet that I still have today. My father used to wear the hat in the rain when going out in the backyard. So it was pretty beat up and still is.

I didn't think much about it until the Duran Duran craze in the 1980s. Simon wore that canvas fedora thing. So I bought one of those and wore it for a while. You find out really quickly that they do not travel well and get dirty quite easily. You just can't brush off the dirt.

That led me back to the felt fedora that was my grandfather's all over again.
Of course it didn't fit now and I wanted to find another just like it. eBay was a boon for that. My wife and I must have ten Whippets now. :cool2: Later I found the Fedora Lounge and people who actually collected these things.

[huh] Now over 100 hats later.........

Regards to all,

J

Nathan Flowers · Jan 31, 2006

.

My Grandad was a rebel, and didn't wear brimmed hats for most of his life. When I was about 18, he lost the top part of his ear to skin cancer. I am as pale as he was, so from then on, I wore a brimmed hat.

epic610 · Jan 31, 2006

LBJ and his Open Roads

during the late 1960's president johnson and many of the other prominent texans in government would proudly be wearing their open roads.

cowboy hats, i noticed, were for ranch hands . . . but the open road, more sleek and refined, was for the ranch owners. with that observation learned that hats confer some important social distinctions upon the wearer.

adamgottschalk · Jan 31, 2006

A spitfire

I used to like to wear almost any hat I could get my hands on in my late teens. The past few years, I've been wearing a Filson wool-bucket hat. I used to really like; in fact, many folks compliment me on it. Now it sits gathering dust, me thinking of it as a dumpy old thing.

Then a few months ago I got a motorcycle jacket (a vintage Schott Perfecto) for some reason--really not me. I got a spitfire-type hat at a local leather shop to go with the jacket. Then I started looking around online for a nicer one. I came across villagehatshop.com, and I got lost in there for a week. Not the greatest, but there's a fair amount of info about hat history, lore, etc. I found myself having a blast thinking about wearing a nice fur-felt hat.

Then I started realizing how many figures I idolize have worn nice hats. Sinatra for example; being a jazz singer, I'm naturally inclined to emulate nearly anything Frank did

Started looking for vintage fur-felt fedoras on eBay, and came across my brown Borsalino one day--it just spoke to me. And on the day I put it on my head for the first time, I decided I'm a fine fur-felt fedora freak.

Hats then have led me further down a path of realizing how much I want to dress myself well, and how long I've actually wanted to do that (and been in relative misery by denying it to myself). I now consider myself a collector, of fine hats, suits, cufflinks, all of it. I have 3 vintage fedoras, brown, charcoal, and navy. All stingy brims; I don't know exactly why I gravitate toward stingy brims, it's not anyone in particular I'm thinking of. Wider brims just seem a liitle more like a costume for me; the stingy ones I'm down with wearing all the time.

All 3 are tall center-crease crowns. My next two hats will be a homburg (with shaped crown) or Open Road, and a teardrop-crown.

Marc Chevalier · Jan 31, 2006

Freddy Krueger wears a fedora. Inspector Gadget does, too. So do orthodox Jewish kids. Good enough for me!

Doctor Strange · Jan 31, 2006

I was always interested in hats. As a kid in the 60s, I collected hats! I still have a bunch of hats from that collection, though they're nearly all too small on me now: two top hats (a collapsable silk and a hard, ancient beaver), a Stetson derby (I also had a Stetson homburg, but it got destroyed when we were using it as movie wardrobe!), an Irish tweed deerstalker, a tarboosh, two boaters, a chef's toque, a couple of kaffiyehs that friends got for me in Israel, a coonskin cap, a WWII-surplus AAC leather flying helmet... Yet I never had a decent fedora back then.

Under the influence of Indy back in the 80s, I got one of the nice fur-felt Stetson Indy hats that came out at the time of Temple of Doom, then a gray teardrop "Scott" (now Arnold Hatters in Manhattan) fedora that I still wear for high-risk adventures like hiking, and a smaller-brimmed teardrop fedora made of wool felt that, well, you know what happens to those! I've also had a selection of wool newsboy caps from folks like JJ Hats and Miller, a Stetson Open Road panama I wore out (now I have a nice Stetson teardrop panama, the "Napa" model), and I wear a gray Stetson Temple on occasion. And I've got a brown Akubra Federation that gets the most wear with my leather jackets these days...

The real Henry · Jan 31, 2006

For me it was defenetly 'Raiders'! That man, that era and most of all those adventures! I think I started with about 10. Indiana Jones was also the main reason I got so interested in the 1930s and last year I even got my first golden era hat. Well, I started with a cotton fishing hat and now I have a Federation and two vintage fedoras. :cool2:

silverHalo · Jan 31, 2006

Ahh, the highlands of Scotland...

I thought it uncooth to drink a 15 year single malt without one, So 500 bottles and 23 Fedoras later, here I am! (I'm sure Tom Waits has a little sway on me about wearing a hat though.) Cheers!

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