HATS IN IRELAND

[hatflick1]

I just returned from two weeks in Ireland, journeying from Dublin to Galway and visiting many small villages and towns along the way.

Hat-wise, the Irish are more prone to wear commercially available baseball caps (GAP, A&F, Yankees, Guinness, etc.) than tweed walking hats or flat caps. The flat cap and newsboy styles were worn largely by American tourists like me or old men, especially farmers and sheep herders. I would guess that every Aran Island man over forty wore a tweed cap.

Shops did sell fedoras. Many were wool. But one British company, Failsworth, offered a few quality fur felt fedora styles as well as fedora straws. May be worth a look.

http://www.failsworth-hats.co.uk/gallery.aspx?categoryid=13

 

[zetwal]

I would guess that every Aran Island man over forty wore a tweed cap.

Did you take pictures? Can you share some here?

 

[Dewhurst]

Very interesting but hardly surprising, wouldn't you say?

 

[John in Covina]

I think that as an American my concepts of what Ireland is supposed to be like is formed by old movies first with "The Quiet Man" as a start. But the latest travel shows such as Rick Steve's Europe shows a much more modern country. (Perhaps with too much MTV influence!) The thing where it's mentioned that mostly tourists and the older folk wore proper hats may indicate the expectations of visitors and the older generation that retains some o the past and not as much modern influences.

 

[danofarlington]

I think that as an American my concepts of what Ireland is supposed to be like is formed by old movies first with "The Quiet Man" as a start. But the latest travel shows such as Rick Steve's Europe shows a much more modern country. (Perhaps with too much MTV influence!) The thing where it's mentioned that mostly tourists and the older folk wore proper hats may indicate the expectations of visitors and the older generation that retains some o the past and not as much modern influences.

I think it's hilarious that everyone looks to someone else as the style lead. If in Ireland people wear American-style baseball caps, and the same in Italy per a recent lounger, and other American wear in Eastern Europe also according to Lefty, whereas at the same time Americans go looking for authenticity and indigenous hat traditions in those same places, they nobody is left holding the bag. We're trying to copy what they were forty and more years ago; they're trying to copy us now. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill. Maybe the real style lead in our case is the past.

 

[Mav]

I think that as an American my concepts of what Ireland is supposed to be like is formed by old movies first with "The Quiet Man" as a start. But the latest travel shows such as Rick Steve's Europe shows a much more modern country. (Perhaps with too much MTV influence!) The thing where it's mentioned that mostly tourists and the older folk wore proper hats may indicate the expectations of visitors and the older generation that retains some o the past and not as much modern influences.

Yep. It's a modernized country (with cool old buildings, a lot of history and hilarious people), and a lot of Americans are surprised/ disappointed the first trip over. I quickly learned on my first trip that the flat tweed cap I was wearing identified me as an American tourist and packed it in my bag for the rest of the trip. At the time, I was a heavy pipe smoker as well, and that was also looked at as a tourist's pseudo- Irish affectation, but one must have a nicotine delivery system.
How did you like the trip other than that, Hatflick? We enjoyed that route from Dublin to Galway so much that if I could do it, I'd move to the Irish midlands.

 

[Boodles]

Just about ditto for me.

I just returned from two weeks in Ireland, journeying from Dublin to Galway and visiting many small villages and towns along the way.

Hat-wise, the Irish are more prone to wear commercially available baseball caps (GAP, A&F, Yankees, Guinness, etc.) than tweed walking hats or flat caps. The flat cap and newsboy styles were worn largely by American tourists like me or old men, especially farmers and sheep herders. I would guess that every Aran Island man over forty wore a tweed cap.

Shops did sell fedoras. Many were wool. But one British company, Failsworth, offered a few quality fur felt fedora styles as well as fedora straws. May be worth a look.

http://www.failsworth-hats.co.uk/gallery.aspx?categoryid=13

We went for 2 weeks in the early fall of 2008, visited some of the same places plus some counties like Donegal, Derry, Antrim, Cork, Kerry. In the larger, more populated, places there were lots of baseball caps. In the more rural areas I saw more flat and 8 panel caps, maybe half baseball and half tweed caps. I wore tweed caps all the time, took some with me and bought more at Magee in Donegal and Kevin & Howlin in Dublin. I was trying, in vain, to appear more of a local. I fooled only the tourists. The barkeep in every hole in the wall place I went into would say something like welcome to Ireland. I quized a few guys and most said something to the effect that my hat was too new or too clean or both. The locals had one beat up greasy hat unlike myself, and many others on this forum, who have a different one for every day of the month.

 

[besdor]

Ireland still has two cap factories producing very fine caps. One is Jonathan Richards . They do everything by hand-even the invoices!!


Steven
www.bencrafthats.com

 

[John in Covina]

fftopic: There is a Simpson's episode where Homer and his dad Abe visit Ireland with the family. There is a line where Homer asks why Ireland is so productive now and one of the locals says it's because they sent all of the Irish that were drags on society to the USA.:eusa_doh:

 

[Methuselah]

half baseball and half tweed caps.

I'm tired, and hat to re-read that, at first I thought you'd spotted some monstrous kind of cross-breed!

My hat experience of Ireland is similar to Britain - mostly baseball caps, a few flat caps, and I hardly ever seeing 8 panel caps.

A lot of countries are similar - I first went to Milan expecting a fashionable city - not the uniform denim and t-shirts I encountered.

 

[Dewhurst]

Ireland still has two cap factories producing very fine caps. One is Jonathan Richards . They do everything by hand-even the invoices!

Crazy. A Jonathan Richards flat cap is my all time favorite, even though it is the wrong size. I'll probably be buried with it.

 

[hatflick1]

I had done a week long comedy writing seminar in Galway some nine years back. It was evident then that traditional walking hats and flat caps were
passe, especially with the younger urban Irish. So this time over I had no
expectations or fantasies about the country still looking like the set of the movie The Field or Ryan's Daughter. Nor did I care that the Irish might spot me as a Yank because I wore variously a flat cap, eight panel or fedora. In fact, I had several Irishmen step up and say...like your hat, lad. (Colleens were quite partial to the fedora. Sideward glances abounded while strolling the Salthill Promeade!)

Additionally, the Old Sod needs all the American tourists it can get whatever we've got on our heads. The numbers of visiting Americans is way down this year. We are missed. Our money. But also our spirit.

What the Irish today may not know is if you grew up in cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, Irish-American, Italian-American, Jewish-American, Polish-American, African-American men have all worn (and may still in the winter months) flat caps and eight panels. I wore a flat cap in high school back in Philly in the early sixties when, for no reason I could imagine, they were referred to as Jeffs. I wore eight panels when I came back from Vietnam in the seventies. So when I donned caps in Ireland it reflected, I felt, my Irish roots not only in Tipperary from which the family sprang centuries ago, but also Philadelphia working class neighborhoods like Mayfair, K&A and Fishtown.

Perhaps with the country's re-newed emphasis on speaking Irish Gaelic (mandatory course in schools) and fortifying its culture against waves of immigration and the invasion of hand held electronic distractions, the caps of lore will return. No longer will we see an Irishman wearing an A&F Varsity adjustable baseball cap made in Vietnam.

 

[danofarlington]

I
Perhaps with the country's re-newed emphasis on speaking Irish Gaelic (mandatory course in schools) and fortifying its culture against waves of immigration and the invasion of hand held electronic distractions, the caps of lore will return. No longer will we see an Irishman wearing an A&F Varsity adjustable baseball cap made in Vietnam.

First, someone else will have to make it cool. Then they will follow. So good cap usage elsewhere may stimulate it in Ireland. Cool, everybody wants to be.

 

[150719541]

My opinio

If you come to Mexico, at any capital city in each state, there are many stores where are selling hats, but are this stores out of shoping centers, thence is not easy find a hat store ("sombrereria"), you need ask at a people who knows the trade city, in the other hand, much business men buy merchandaise in China and sell in own countries.
Here there are 3 or 4 hat factories (morcon,rocha,viquez,tardan and others) producing between 2 or 3 millions per year in different hat styles, I believe what a half are selling in, although, base ball caps are been selling maybe 6 or 7 millions per year. A great business¡¡¡¡