News article claiming a "Hat Comeback"

[Wildblue]

Haven't seen this one widely posted here other than buried down in an Optimo thread. Not sure I agree with all the author's conclusions, but a rather interesting article about the status of hat sales today, and that they're rather strong. Good stuff.

http://local.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=25502295&GT1=24000

 

[zetwal]

Interesting. Speaking of Optimo, here's something I posted before but it got no comment. Maybe it will be seen here ...

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/index.jsp?fr_story=741ec4835a0a26e576b63a490c1b947c9a2599fb

 

[Duper]

Thank-you Wildblue and zetwal. I enjoyed the video and the story.

 

[tonyb]

I dunno.

Stories in this vein pop up every now and then. Most of them offer little more than anecdotal evidence of this alleged renaissance in hat wearing, although the piece you cited, Wildblue, does quote the guy from Dorfman-Pacific saying their sales are up by double-digit percentages over a year ago. That's data of a sort, I suppose, but I still see no hard numbers. This is not to imply that their sales aren't indeed up by 10 percent or more, only that the story raises more questions than it answers.

Contrast that with the Business Week story zetwal dug up. There we have some dollar amounts.

Still, I suspect that the gist of the story -- that hats are making a comeback -- is at least somewhat accurate. I see an aggressive company apparently committed to the hat business, Dorfman-Pacific, acquiring other brands and attempting to market their products to a wider audience. I see hats atop the noggins of more and more celebrities. And I see "proper" hats (as opposed to caps) on more and more men all the time. Those are cheap hats, almost exclusively, but they're still hats.

 

[dwebber18]

I'll bring back hat wearing as soon as Art gets me my first proper fedora, haha. I hope it does come back, but I doubt it will be more than a fad with celebrities and emulators at most. Of course everything has its fan base, just like us, but I don't think it will come back in such a general way as it once was. Willing to do my small part though. I also wish nice shoes would come back, I was at an interview with 20-30 financial professionals and only myself and maybe 2 other guys were wearing proper dress shoes with a suit. Everyone else was wearing square toed rubber soled "dress" shoes, even the upper level managers conducting the interview.