Hat prices hurting hat comeback?

[HeyMoe]

Well, there's definately that aspect of it. When I was 18 - 35 hats were for "bad hair days". Now they're for "no hair days", in other words, every day.

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Well I first noticed I was going bald on my 18th birthday so hats in some form have been a constant on my noggin for the past 25 years

 

[Dan Allen]

DH I think you hit a good point. I get a ton of compliments and to think about it many of them are African Americans.

Historyteach24, dh66--you have both made an observations that I have made for years but was reluctant to comment on fearing someone putting a negative spin on it. When in a mixed crowd and a comment is made about my hat, it invariably will come from someone of African American descent. I have received comments from African Americans of all ages, from white haired elders, hip hop rapper types to little tikes and 100% positive- and Iv'e seen a few that I commented on. If "proper" hats make a large comeback we may all owe them a little thanks.

 

[dh66]

I feel your pain Hey Moe.

I was just looking back and realized I had missed Great White's post (pre-coffee). He certainly makes some valid points. Maybe if a $200+ hat came clearly marked with a little polo player or some other such high end logo so that it was obvious to everyone around how much it had cost more people would be lined up to get one. As it is, you would have to leave the price tag hanging on it, a la Minnie Pearl, and everyone knows that's just tacky.

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[dh66]

Historyteach24, dh66--you have both made an observations that I have made for years but was reluctant to comment on fearing someone putting a negative spin on it. When in a mixed crowd and a comment is made about my hat, it invariably will come from someone of African American descent. I have received comments from African Americans of all ages, from white haired elders, hip hop rapper types to little tikes and 100% positive- and Iv'e seen a few that I commented on. If "proper" hats make a large comeback we may all owe them a little thanks.

I'm with you Dan. I sincerely hope a can of worms has not been opened.

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[Lorne]

We have to face hard facts brothers (and sisters).

We live in a culture where a well made hat hat from a manufacturer is going to cost you 200$, and a similar hat from a custom maker at least twice that.

But, to put that in perspective, you can find sneakers on Ebay costing ten times that much because a millionaire's name is on it.

Its all about priorities folks, and I’m sticking with mine.

 

[Historyteach24]

I think you all make valid points; maybe it is marketing or maybe it is simply teaching what a "good" hat is. I think JLee has a really good point. Start advertising fedoras again! Doesn't have to be gigantic at first just a commercial/billboard or two, but if people see proper hats on people they will be more prone to trying one on in a store.

 

[Dan Allen]

"maybe it is marketing"--If kids today will put a set of wheels and tires that cost far more than the car they put them on then the cost of a new hat would be nothing to them if that was what they thought was "cool"

 

[Historyteach24]

I agree Dan. That was the point I was trying to make. I would really like to see more people have a appreciation for proper hats. I know it will never be as big as it once was and that is not a bad thing. I would just simply like to live in a culture where a guy gave a damn about how he looked and what he wore.

 

[great white]

"maybe it is marketing"--If kids today will put a set of wheels and tires that cost far more than the car they put them on then the cost of a new hat would be nothing to them if that was what they thought was "cool"

Truer words never spoken.....

 

[Edward]

Like most all items of apparel there are hats offered at every pricepoint so I don't see price as a barrier to their popularity.

Agreed. It's simply the whim of fashion. I personally don't think it's good for the longevity of anything for it to suddenly become high-fashion though, given that it won't last - as Uncle Oscar said, "Fasihon is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." I see more people now wearing something on their heads than I remember back in the eighties. Mostly it's woolly hats in Winter, for cold, but an increasing number of hats of all types in Summer to keep the sun off as people become aware with time just how unhealthy sun exposure is. I saw a thing in the paper the other day which showed a lot of hats on the catwalk at whatever fashion week is currently on. Maybe that might filter to the high street. [huh]

Well, there's definately that aspect of it. When I was 18 - 35 hats were for "bad hair days". Now they're for "no hair days", in other words, every day.

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I wore a black wool trilby when I was eighteen, quite regularly. I started wearing a hat regularly as an undergraduate, though - in Belfast, by the tiem the rain was hard enough to require a brolly, it was inevitably too windy to make it worth the hassle, so I adopted a cap all Winter. Into the Summer, it was about 2000 I started wearing a brimmed hat whe I realised how much of the sun it could help keep off me (I have always hated to tan, and don't care for the Sun much on any level). A lot of people already do both those things - all they need is a push to see it as a year-round norm, and to make it a deliberate style choice...

Historyteach24, dh66--you have both made an observations that I have made for years but was reluctant to comment on fearing someone putting a negative spin on it. When in a mixed crowd and a comment is made about my hat, it invariably will come from someone of African American descent. I have received comments from African Americans of all ages, from white haired elders, hip hop rapper types to little tikes and 100% positive- and Iv'e seen a few that I commented on. If "proper" hats make a large comeback we may all owe them a little thanks.

My experience too - black British folks of all ages (African American isn't a term we tend to use over here as many of the black community draw their roots back to the West Indies, and, well... they're not American! ). Also I get a lot of my compliments from East London Asian kids, mostly of Bangladeshi descent, who have adopted the hip hop style.

 

[Dan Allen]

" I personally don't think it's good for the longevity of anything for it to suddenly become high-fashion though"
That may be true but if the youth can "suddenly" start using a role model different than today--say the retro styles in Boardwalk Empire and such (a form of marketing if you will) then we will at least be spared the "pants on the ground type"--and perhaps the price of hats will drop a little as demands raise production and economy of scales takes effect. The youth of today while not the majority we baby boomers enjoyed still wield a massive economic force due to their disposable income.

 

[great white]

" I personally don't think it's good for the longevity of anything for it to suddenly become high-fashion though"
That may be true but if the youth can "suddenly" start using a role model different than today--say the retro styles in Boardwalk Empire and such (a form of marketing if you will) then we will at least be spared the "pants on the ground type"--and perhaps the price of hats will drop a little as demands raise production and economy of scales takes effect. The youth of today while not the majority we baby boomers enjoyed still wield a massive economic force due to their disposable income.

I often wonder if they actually know where the "pants around your knees" look came from?

I'll wager if they did, more pants would be pulled up......well, at least one explanation of sagging pants would have them pulling them up.

Either way, it just plain looks bad.

 

[TheDane]

Maybe if a $200+ hat came clearly marked with a little polo player or some other such high end logo so that it was obvious to everyone around how much it had cost more people would be lined up to get one. As it is, you would have to leave the price tag hanging on it, a la Minnie Pearl, and everyone knows that's just tacky.

You mean like Borsalino? They have printed their logo in gold on the bow-knot for quite some years now (talking about "tacky") - and we're still having this discussion. I'm afraid it's not that simple [huh]

I don't believe that economics today are worse than in the 30s, when a fedora was a necessity. Our priorities has changed, and we spend our money very differently today. Of course I'm aware that most Americans wouldn't be able to do without a car, but we all fill our lives with luxury and gadgets, people in the 30s couldn't even dream of. Crisis or not ... we are still lightyears away from the economic disasters of the 30s.

Powdered wigs were used by some few men long after they went out of fashion, but they never became mainstream again. And today plus-fours are not seen much outside golf courses. The list is quite long, and it's hard to say if the fedora is on it. My grandkids will probably be able to tell, when they reach my age

 

[dh66]

You mean like Borsalino? They have printed their logo in gold on the bow-knot for quite some years now (talking about "tacky") - and we're still having this discussion. I'm afraid it's not that simple [huh]

Too bad they don't have the brand recognition of polo or nike here in the states. Maybe they should up their advertising ante.
Speaking for myself, if the fedora were to come back into mainstream fashion, I'd start wearing my caps and cowboy hats a whole lot more often, or maybe even a powdered wig.

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[Lorne]

Brothers, and Sisters, we live in an unfair world.

A good quality mass-market hat might cost you 200$. A good quality bespoke hat might cost you several times that.

If it makes you feel any better, a collector's pair of sneaker can cost you $5000 on Ebay.

Its a matter of priorities...

And I'd rather have one good hat than any number of collectors sneakers.

 

[TheDane]

dh66: Advertising doesn't do the trick on it's own. Lacoste's sales would never have skyrocketed back in the 60s or early 70s. Lacoste got it's enormous success at the same time Reagan and Thatcher came into power - and movies like Wall Street were made. Suddenly it was okay to make extreme loads of money - and show it off. Nike was lucky to hit "the healthwave" and prospered from that. As I understand it, jeans and other western wear was popularized in the Northern and Eastern USA, when dustbowl farmers began to offer "western vacations" to cityfolks during the years following The Great Depression.

If you hit the spirit of a certain timepocket, you have a good chance to boost your brand to the skies with advertising. If fedoras were to be reintroduced, skincancer could be a very plausable issue to build the storytelling on - if you write the rabbit- and beaver-characters out of the story, that is

If someone succeeds, you and I may very likely find ourselves fighting over caps and powdered wigs on The Bay

 

[great white]

Interesting comments on the african american hat wearer and hats in general:

These days, the hippest hat is the stingy (or small) brim fedora, as worn by Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake and the cast of the hit TV series Mad Men.

Lynes did not start out as a hat connoisseur. But he always liked hats, even loved them. It was his search for quality that led the Toyota employee-turned-entrepreneur to Biltmore Hats, a Canadian company that has managed to survive for more than 90 years, despite changes in men's fashion and company ownership – and two bankruptcies.

In the company's heyday, 300 or 400 employees cranked out more than a million hats a year. Now the staff of 20, 12 of them actual hatters, produce about 30,000 annually. And they just got out of the red, Lynes says.

From its beginnings marketing primarily to white, middle-class Canadian businessmen, many of them just coming home from World War I, Biltmore seems to have been given another reprieve from an urban, African-American market. Aside from the tan "peak" hats Biltmore makes for the RCMP and some hats sold in Canadian shops, the bulk of the company's clients are young black men, many of them under 40.

"That's what I discovered when I took over Biltmore, that most of the revenue was coming in from the African-American community," Lynes says. His retailers in New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Oakland, Calif., tell him that 75 per cent of their clients are black.....

...John F. Kennedy's hatless inauguration on Jan. 20, 1961 is an often-cited cause of the decline of men's hats as a matter of social etiquette. But black men continued to wear them, Lynes says, propping up the industry.

Why? Perhaps because the hat is a status symbol, a self-esteem booster, Lynes speculates. "I would think that if you look at the community it's like (after) being pressed down in the past, from history, you always wanted to make a good impression," he says.

Biltmore hatter Kevin Giovanditto, 43, recalls the good old days as he finishes fastening leather bands on a rack of RCMP hats.

"There was a person at every single machine in this place," he says, wearing a baseball cap that says "Born to Ride."

"That's when hats were in, though. I mean, hats were really in ... That's when Indiana Jones was up, that movie Crocodile Dundee, we were doing thousands of them."

These days, young men in hats are probably trying to emulate celebrity style rather than channel the elegance of the Biltmore Hotel – or the escapades of Indiana Jones.

Lynes says the hat's popularity may have skipped a generation: today's young people see the hat as a trendy, nostalgic throwback and decide, at least he hopes, that "it's cool to wear a hat, because my pop didn't wear a hat."

source: http://www.thestar.com/life/fashion...ore_hat_co_puts_a_fashionable_lid_on_men.html

Originally written in 2009. I ran across it while looking for info on Biltmore Hats....

 

[EliasRDA]

If hats are to make a resurgence, I believe this is the way to "sell" it:

Sun and shade is why I have an sunny river on the way.

I've know a couple friends who have either contracted or died from skin cancer. Something I would like to avoid. In my opinion, a broad brim just increases my odds.

The styling comes later if you can get them in the door.

I knew a gentleman who was the captain of the Delaware tallship, aka the Kalmar Nyckel, Captain David Hyatt, who passed because of wildfire melanoma. Typical to most seafaring/water men (my dad among them) he would remove his shirt while working around the boat & contacted skin cancer. My dad alone has had several lesions removed from his face, ears & back, now he has to do some sort of face peel demanded by his skin doctor. So far knock on wood they have been benign, but we know its just a matter of time.

Since I am fair haired & skin it concerns me greatly, I have had my back/face/ears badly sunburned many times when I was a kid, I also hate suntain lotion just like my dad & older brother, so I know its a matter of time for me. I started wearing panamas several years ago when I went back to hawaii & its one of the reasons I'm giving up caps, which really irks the hams I do public events with since they feel I need to wear a cap with either ARES/RACES on it or my call. I tell them thats why my shirts have my call & I wear a name badge with my call on it but I will not stop wearing either my panama/fedora or a boonie hat.

As for the prices of decent hats like fedoras? Well, how about some of the hatters here tell me how much difference there is between a decent western hat & a fedora? Or than size that is, is there a big price difference?
I can find some decent "cowboy" hats here for under $100, good for beaters, & I know I'll pay more for say a Resistol or a really good Stetson. So if Stetson can sell a decent cowboy for under a hundred, why cant they do it for a fedora?

Or is it because Stetson can make more cowboy hats, so it comes down to supply & demand? More cowboys because of more demand so it brings the price down?

 

[EliasRDA]

Great White,
Sorry but I have to take offense to this statement..
>Then there"s the Skyrocketing real estate cost driven by the greedy banks and real estate brokers.<

I agree the banks have become greedy but please dont lump all real estate brokers/agents into that. Not all real estate people are greedy, nor are all banks. People who think they need a second McMansion at outrageous prices are just as much to blame for the housing downfall. I've told people who have come to me that a 2nd home overpriced at 500,000 when it appraises for 250,000 is a bad mistake but because they "had to have it" they ended up underwater then in foreclosure. Especially if their job status was questionable, for whatever reason.
But then again I'm a rare agent that as one of my associations staffers put it.. I dont candycoat things, I speak plainly & honestly. Some of its due to my upbringing, some due to the military.

So, please dont assume all real estate agents are greedy, we are not all used car salepeople or snake oil sellers. (j/k about car salepersons, my mom used to sell used cars when I was a kid to help us get by in the 70's)

 

[great white]

Great White,
Sorry but I have to take offense to this statement..
>Then there"s the Skyrocketing real estate cost driven by the greedy banks and real estate brokers.<

I agree the banks have become greedy but please don't lump all real estate brokers/agents into that. Not all real estate people are greedy, nor are all banks. People who think they need a second McMansion at outrageous prices are just as much to blame for the housing downfall. I've told people who have come to me that a 2nd home overpriced at 500,000 when it appraises for 250,000 is a bad mistake but because they "had to have it" they ended up underwater then in foreclosure. Especially if their job status was questionable, for whatever reason.
But then again I'm a rare agent that as one of my associations staffers put it.. I dont candycoat things, I speak plainly & honestly. Some of its due to my upbringing, some due to the military.

So, please dont assume all real estate agents are greedy, we are not all used car salepeople or snake oil sellers. (j/k about car salepersons, my mom used to sell used cars when I was a kid to help us get by in the 70's)

Your opinion and you are welcome to it. I take no offense to it either.

But, in general (and generalizations are always a dangerous thing) the real estate industry is a large factor in the rapidly rising prices of real estate. they have a vested interest in selling a house for as much as possible (IE: commissions). I see it where I live all the time. I'm not saying they don't serve a function, they do. Just that function and the ethical quandaries involved in it become somewhat muddled in most agents interpretation.

For example: a house that cost 250,000 last year will cost 325,00 this year and it's all on the advice of the brokers. There is no new industry, there is no new input of capital, just the ever rising prices of housing here.

When we moved in, we were told point blank from our agent to start bidding 15-20,000 less than asking as that is the standard asking over expected here. never mind that a 125,000 house 3 years ago now goes for 250+. Further complicating the matter is the fact they have "exclusive listings" here. Meaning: you can only list and show your house with your agent and only they can sell it. So the same agent who told me to ask 20,000 less is the one who told the seller to ask 20,000 more. It also ensures they don't have to share their 6% with another agent. Shady, shady, shady......greed is what is spiraling the prices. Both the sellers and the agents.

And that is standard practice here. Each house we looked at on a separate exclusive listing was the same story from the agent.

My house was built 3 years ago for 325,000 and my agent is advising and asking price of nearly 400 when we sell this year. Not much has been done to the property either. We'll be looking for a quick sell, so I'm listing lower than market and will take what I paid for it. All I'm looking for is my down payment we put into the house and then get the heck out of here. That put one heck of a knot in his face.....

I've lived all over Canada and it's always the same thing: overinflated in the west, sealed bids that get sent back multiple times in Winnipeg, Ontario is just a mess everywhere for prices, etc, etc.....

these are not second houses I'm taking about, these are primary residences.

My hat is off to you if you have a working ethical compass, but I have met few agents that share the trait. It is a rare quality everywhere today. And the trough is "shoulder to shoulder" here in NL.

Not to worry though, pretty much the rest of the world is similarly tainted when it comes to "profit"......it's not an uncommon thing anymore to rook your fellow man every chance you get.

Mores the pity......

Anyways, lets get back to hats!

Much more entertaining to discuss.