Decisions, decisions? Do you match your hat to anything?

[gqmagic]

Midnight is in my top 2, Black Cherry being the other one.

I can't decide

 

[The Good]

I try to avoid wearing my pale grey hat with earth-toned clothes, unless it is a tan raincoat or sports jacket that I think it works well with. It seems a tan fedora is very versatile though, and I would even wear it with my mid-grey suit.

 

[Dronak]

I'm going through this some what now after picking up a Tobacco (Camel) color coat.

here are my choices...

I kind of prefer the way contrasting colors look here, which seems to agree with the previous comments. The midnight blue, black cherry, and oxblood look pretty good. Chocolate also looks like it would work if you wanted something more similar in color to the coat, but not as close as the whiskey color is. You could also pick the color based on what else you plan to wear it with -- if a certain shade goes with more of what you wear, that might be the better choice.

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

I view the at as the ! of what I am wearing that day so I sometimes start with the hat and work backwards. I do keep in certain color family's and complementary colors.
basic-color-theory

 

[John in Covina]

I tend to take more care selecting a hat when dressed up but when casually dress I am less likely to worry if it matches really well.

 

[TomS]

If I'm dressing up then I take care to try and match the hat with what I'm wearing, BUT if I'm casually dressed I pick a hat or cap that I just *like*.

 

[KingAndrew]

Exact matches look too forced. I remember a line from the old "Dress for Success" book, where the author said that matching your tie and pocket square will make people wonder what airline you work for. I feel the same is true of hats that are too precisely matched.

Actually, I find that it looks really good when my hat is in a color that contrasts with my outfit. I remember being astonished when I was in college and saw how super my brown fedora looked with my navy pinstripe suit. Much better than the black hat I had first picked up.

Some hat colors like oxblood manage to look sharp with nearly everything without exactly matching anything. After all, do any of us have an oxblood suit or shirt? Oxblood shoes are a definite possibility, though.

And my seersucker suits demand a good straw hat. Felt just looks out of place with them.

For the record, I like the midnight blue for your coat, although the chocolate is also a great color. It seems odd that we wear so many blue suits and shirts, but blue hats have always been less common than black, grey, brown, tan, or even white (if you include straws).

At the moment here in Shanghai, I've only got one good hat--a tan Stetson. So that has to work with everything for now. But my moonstone Akubra Fed IV is in the mail...

 

[g.durand]

I vote for Midnight. But maybe that's 'cause I'm waiting for my midnight Optimo to come back with its new sweatband and a reblocking.

 

[barrowjh]

Yes, with a robust collection I just about have to put some effort into which hat goes with which outfit if for no other reason than to ensure some rotation. Not to the point of the same hat with a particular outfit each time I wear that combination, but as others commented, just some attention to general color groups or tones. If the outfit calls for black shoes, the browns and olive hats don't work with that. If I'm wearing brown shoes to work, then black, grey, or navy hats look odd. I use shoe color here as a proxy for a shoes, shirt, tie, trousers, and belt combination.

If casual, in tennis shoes (retired running shoes), then the color of the shirt will have influence on the color of the hat.

When I have the thin-ribbons out (spring and fall) the differences are still there but it is less important. The sand or olive shades go better with a brown-shoe outfit, but the putty silverbelly hats go with anything. When the straws are out - ribbon color becomes important, but I have some pugs with which to do a change-up.