I Like This Hat, But How Do You Just Start Wearing a Hat...

[jbucklin]

People that I see on a regular basis actually get upset when I DON'T wear a hat. As for me, I started out wearing the trendy stingy-brimmed trilby/fedoras, but, no more---I now have 2 custom hats by Art Fawcett that have that 30s look, an Akubra Federation IV Deluxe, an assortment of modern Stetson fedoras (my fave being the Nostalgia), a few straw fedoras including an inexpensive Panama. People get a kick out of my obsession with hats and some even seem fascinated by it. You may feel self-conscious at first but that will subside and your love for hats will outweigh the occasional comment (with me it's "gangster" or "Indiana Jones" or something like that).

 

[jkingrph]

If anything, western-style hats are easier to slip into 'under the radar' than true fedoras, in my opinion. Just pop it on, and go about your business. People'll get used to it quick enough. At first you'll receive a few comments, but they should lessen in frequency over time.

+ on the western style, especially here in E. Texas. I have/had westerns for years, and they are always in style here. Illegal immigrants wear a lot of straw westerns with some of craziest brim treatments you have seen, folds and sharp creases in brim to turn it upward, sharply.

Mine are all conserative dressy westerns, most with standard triple crease bash, a few with a kind of "c-crown"bash which I prefer.

It was really easy to transform to fedoras, in fact when I started with them, and I continue to get approving looks and nice comments, mostly from young ladies who are of an age to be daughters or possibly granddaughters.

Bottom line, whatever you choose, put it on and wear it everywhere, all of the time, and it will become a part of you!

 

[Yeps]

Start out by wearing it when the elements decree that you should: rain, snow, excessive sun, etc. At some point, it will just feel so natural that you will be able to wear it every day without feeling self conscious, and people will be confused when you don't wear a hat.

 

[Dan Rodemsky]

At the risk of not sounding cool and snarky and hepcatty, I'll provide an actual answer to your question.

When you first start wearing a hat you're self conscious about it, and that will show. In addition, and many of the veterans here have worn hats so long that they have forgotten it, there are various hat skills and techniques that you need to learn. The best way to solve both problems is to wear the hat indoors at your house for a while, in your pajamas while surfing the web and so on. (If you live with someone, you just have to go cold turkey there.) And then go out on practice runs, shopping and the like, alone, in places that you are unlikely to meet anyone you know.

When you get used to the hat you literally forget you have it on, and that nonchalance comes through as confidence, and you're less likely to be teased.

Here're some things you have to learn:

1. How to put the hat on quickly, in the right position, without fiddling with it, and without looking in a mirror. This is actually hard. During your home period. you should do this, and then check yourself in a mirror. You need to learn to put the hat on because you'll have to take it off from time to time while you're out, for instance to wipe off sweat.
3. What positions of the hat work: down, turned up, brim up and down, cocked to the side, and how to position for all of them without a mirror. You might want the hat down for the sun, and tilted back on your noggin when you walk in a shop.
5. How to hold the hat when it's off your head and how much abuse you can give it. In the beginning you want to baby it. But you'll learn that a hat brush can revive much, and that the hat can be pretty much crushed and survive. Babying it too much looks like you lack confidence.
7. When to take the hat off to wipe off sweat. You'll need to figure this out when you are outside wearing it. A certain amount of sweat is no problem, and helps shape the sweatband to your head. After a certain point it starts to leak through to the ribbon and stain it. You learn to feel when it's getting too "juicy" in the hat and you have to take it off and wipe your head and sweatband.

The training wheel stage doesn't take that long, and you'll know you've gone a long way when you look in a shop window and realize that you had forgotten you had the hat on. For advanced training acquire more advanced hats. For instance, porkpies are relatively advanced. Someone comfortable in a fedora will feel a tiny bit self conscious in a porkpie. From entry level to advanced: "Australian" brim hat; stingy brim tapered trilby/fedora; wide brim untapered fedora; porkpie. Weird colors take a hat up notch in the scale.

How to respond to comments/questions from friends? My advice is to be as terse as possible. If you get a compliment, say Thanks. Don't go into detail about hats unless the other party seems genuinely interested. A crack? Ignore it if possible, and stick to your guns and keep wearing the hat. If your wife/girlfriend has a problem with it, in my opinion, it's your head. Ignore her, and if it continues let her know you intend to stick with hat wearing and you'd appreciate it if she'd cut it out. As you acquire more hats you may need to remind her of her shoe collection. And acquiring more hats in different styles helps diffuse the costume issue and the "trying to look like [celebrity]" issue.

I'm sure that some readers are rolling their eyes and chuckling at this, but you, OP, know that this advice is helping you. You don't have to thank me.

Great advice and I will thank you.

 

[dhermann1]

Jeez, you're just wearing a hat....it's not like you're coming out of the closet after a sex change......

lol
Very true. But as I think most of us know, starting with hats can be unnerving. We tend to make a MUCH bigger deal of it than it really is. When you first put a big brimmed hat on your head, you can feel like you've put a gigantic Sioux war bonnet on your head, and that you stick out like crazy. Not true.
That's a very nice hat for every day wear. One of the first hats I bought, at Bencraft a few years ago, was a Stetson very similar to that. I still pull it out from time to time, tho my tastes have evolved to the traditional gros grain ribboned fedora now.
Wear it in good health. And be prepared for a lot more admiring looks and comments than negative ones.

 

[scottyrocks]

The training wheel stage doesn't take that long, and you'll know you've gone a long way when you look in a shop window and realize that you had forgotten you had the hat on. For advanced training acquire more advanced hats. For instance, porkpies are relatively advanced. Someone comfortable in a fedora will feel a tiny bit self conscious in a porkpie. From entry level to advanced: "Australian" brim hat; stingy brim tapered trilby/fedora; wide brim untapered fedora; porkpie. Weird colors take a hat up notch in the scale.

Porkpies are advanced in that regard, but less advanced in others. For instance, putting on a porkpie and getting it to line up properly on your head, without a mirror, is much easier than with a fedora. There's no front crease to worry about, and if the front of the brim is up, as mine is, then it's an even more completely simple operation.

 

[EggHead]

Try walking on trails, in parks for a while. A hat with wide brim would be a natural there. Then move on to more busy locations.

 

[T Rick]

Jeez, you're just wearing a hat....it's not like you're coming out of the closet after a sex change......

I'd consider that more of a "re-building the closet to become the exterior of the dwelling" than I would a "coming out". But whatever floats yer boat .

For the OP, just wear it.

 

[Rick Blaine]

Hats are like moustasches. Keep on wearing it until your friends quit teasing you about it.

Hats are also like mustaches in that I haven't been without either since about 1975!

 

[Italian-wiseguy]

When I attended Scuole Medie (Junior High) everything even slightly different from the norm aroused millions of stupid and gratuitous comments.

Years after University, I found I can go to public offices dressed as a ninja or a medieval knight, and nobody would care.
(No, I don't normally dress as a ninja! )

I mean, when I started wearing hats I was kind of suspicious, because of the school days. Well, I soon noticed that nobody cares or has anything to say:
and they saw me wearing fedoras, bowlers, berets and even a kippah/yarmulke (a big black "yeshivish" one; I'm partially jewish) not the most common scene in Italy.

It helped me that I was used to wear caps (newsboy or "driving" caps) which worked as training about being less self-conscious.

ciao!

 

[jkingrph]

When I attended Scuole Medie (Junior High) everything even slightly different from the norm aroused millions of stupid and gratuitous comments.

Years after University, I found I can go to public offices dressed as a ninja or a medieval knight, and nobody would care.
(No, I don't normally dress as a ninja! )

I mean, when I started wearing hats I was kind of suspicious, because of the school days. Well, I soon noticed that nobody cares or has anything to say:
and they saw me wearing fedoras, bowlers, berets and even a kippah/yarmulke (a big black "yeshivish" one; I'm partially jewish) not the most common scene in Italy.

It helped me that I was used to wear caps (newsboy or "driving" caps) which worked as training about being less self-conscious.

ciao!

You know, I think most of us have had similar experiences. It was certainly that way in Louisiana when I was in Junior High and High school.

When I hit college everyone was carrying an umbrella, a couple of years earlier you would have been laughed out of school.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I think that style of hat is easy enough to wear without much worries. I used one very similar as a 'gateway' hat to go to more formal looking fedoras. Your choice is a very casual look and I still see many of them around. Wear it with pride.

Like this and not look like an eccentric at best and a bit nutty at worse?

Do you just jump in and pretend like you've always been wearing them? Do you acknowledge that you just started wearing a hat like this? It's a big move.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Akubra-Hat-...?pt=US_Hats&hash=item5d30984553#ht_824wt_1110

 

[scottyrocks]

When I attended Scuole Medie (Junior High) everything even slightly different from the norm aroused millions of stupid and gratuitous comments.

I can relate. We all had to dress almost exactly the same way or the ridicule was merciless. In my group, fashions changed when the 'cool guy' bought something new. It was that way with bomber jackets, fishing hats (yes, fishing hats), and frye boots, among other things.

I still did my own thing when I wanted to because I was kind of an outsider anyway.

 

[derleicaman]

I have the Angler myself, and it's a very easy hat to wear. I wear mine in rain and foul weather when I don't want to risk messing up one of my vintage Borsalinos (another incoming!). I am partial to my Borso fedoras, although for a change of pace I have some nice Western-style Stetsons. The comment that always grates is "Hi Indy", mostly at work. I am into Goodwear A-2s as well, so I guess the combination of a nice fedora and a A-2 jacket is vaguely Indiana Jonesish. Of course, we all know better here. On a trip to Vegas over 4th of July, I tried out a couple of Kangol summer weight knit caps. Great for travel as they pack flat and are pretty cool in a hot climate. Comments from friends "It makes you look Irish" (I am part Irish on my mother's side) to my kids who recognized it as the hat the Treme character Antoine Batiste favors, and thought it was cool.

Anyway, wearing hats does require some degree of self-confidence and dealing with the occasional stupid comment. I'm at the point in life where I don't really care. I like hats, always have. They keep the sun off my head and keep me warm in the winter. Works for me.

 

[Duper]

I started with a Banjo Paterson as well for my first real fur felt hat. I picked it as it looked casual and the brim size was more moderate than most other Akubras. I still find 2 3/4 inches is about my max for comfort range in brim sizes. The first time I wore it in public I was uneasy I have to confess. It did not take very long until it felt entirely natural. Now I could not imagine leaving the house without a broadbrimmed hat on any day the temperature is above freezing.

 

[Magister]

I'm quite new to this, but I've been considering adding a hat to my wardrobe, and am having trouble deciding on what style would suit me best. I don't think I want to wear something with a wide brim. I am attracted to porkpies, but not to the hepcat/hipster image that they can suggest. A Homberg seems to formal. A Borsalino might be something to look into.

As far as starting to wear one, I agree that it is a confidence thing. I began wearing bowties a few months ago and I simply behaved as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do so; now it actually is. There were a few intial Orville Reddenbocker comments, but now I hear nothing but compliments. I imagine it would be similar with a carefully selected hat.

 

[scottyrocks]

I am attracted to porkpies, but not to the hepcat/hipster image that they can suggest. A Homberg seems to formal. A Borsalino might be something to look into.

Not sure what you mean by 'Borsalino.' Do you mean 'fedora?' 'Borsalino' is the only brand name you mentioned.

 

[Magister]

Not sure what you mean by 'Borsalino.' Do you mean 'fedora?' 'Borsalino' is the only brand name you mentioned.

Well, most of the Borsalinos I've seen here seem to have narrower brims than other fedoras, so I had assumed it was a style. Whoops.

 

[scottyrocks]

Borsalinos come in different brim widths and styles. I get the feeling that you meant 'fedora,' regardless of the brand name.

 

[Magister]

Well then; time to look for narrow brimmed fedoras!