Pre-soiled hats... heheheh

[akaBruno]

Here, I've been agonizing how to get the stains out o' my old Stetson Straw Roadrunner and I find this --> http://www.millerhats.com/cowpuncher_index/index.html

I'm not worried about the stains anymore.

BRUNO

 

[Bud-n-Texas]

These are made for the City Slickers or Dime Store Cowboy Wannabe's, that want people to think they know one end of a horse from another

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Good Lord. Hopefully they're using only the finest soil. I'd hate to get ripped off.

bk

 

[Bud-n-Texas]

Rumor has it, that they use synthetic manure developed in Brooklyn.

 

[akaBruno]

Rumor has it, that they use synthetic manure developed in Brooklyn.

I hear tell they gotta lotta horse's arses in Brooklyn.

Naw, just kidding. The only time my hat has been full o' pucky was when it was resting on my noggin. I bought it 16 years ago, didn't own it a month when my buddy's teenage son did a kid flop on it. Taught me a lesson about leaving my hat on a chair. I just straightened it up, best I could, and have worn it to the point that both the inner and outer bands rotted off it. So, I just made a new band for it and it's ready for another summer, stains and all.

 

[Joel Tunnah]

Yes, well we can't all be real cowboys like Bud. When you ride your Palamino to Best Buy, do you tie it up to the bike rack?

 

[Mark G]

A lot of Hat makers are offering this. Rich Rand's for example. I think it got it's start from making hats for movies. Can't have Gus and Call in new hats. It is kinda funny to be seeing ti offered on a $600 hat, I guess they must not use Pace picante sauce with their tortillas.

 

[Joel Tunnah]

Hmmm, this is turning into a let's-mock-the-east-coast thing, and yet Millers Hats is in Houston Texas. [huh]

Hi Bruno. Are you a real cowboy too? I wouldn't know, being from Brooklyn.

 

[akaBruno]

That's a bike rack? I've always wondered where the gol-dang waterin trough was. Hell, at the Walmart's round these parts you gotta buy the water, and have a good 10 gallon hat at that.

My Nellie prefers Perrier.

BTW, no offense to anyone from Brooklyn. It's just all in good fun.

 

[Bud-n-Texas]

Maybe there will soon be a soiled fedora, with synthetic soot from Dallas.

If so I may have to ride my sorrel to the big city and pack one back in my saddle bags.

 

[tonyb]

Signs of the end times?

Just read a magazine piece about guitar makers wherein it was mentioned that Gibson sends new guitars to a guy who artificially "ages" them so that they appear (to the untrained eye, anyway) to have seen decades of hard use. According to the writer, Gibson charges a considerable premium for such "customization."
Even a person as unaware of fashion trends as I knew that blue jeans now come pre-worn-out, but I wasn't prepared for what I encountered recently at my local J.C Penny's. I went there to buy a new pair or two of blue jeans and found it difficult to acquire such things in "regular" versions. These days, jeans are offered with varying degrees of artificial wear and a seemingly endless array of fit options, yet what I think of as jeans -- dark blue and stiff when new, fairly snug in the rump, a waistband that rides just a bit above the navel, etc. -- are scarce.
Kitchen cabinets can be bought with a "distressed" finish, meaning that the parts that show are pre-dinged at the factory.
Now I'm wondering how long it will be until new pickup trucks come pre-scratched and dented from the factory, perhaps with a bale of hay as a $500 "upgrade." That oughta make their insurance-salesman owners stand a little taller as they mosey their way through the supermarket parking lots.
So fake soiling on a cowboy hat is all of a piece, I suppose. It's becomng a world where appearing often counts for more than being, where what politicians and PR flacks wish people to believe has more influence than what actually is.

 

[akaBruno]

Hey, I got relatives all over that Dallas/Ft.Worth area. They ride in things called Horse Shows. Not only are the hair and hat perfect... they paint their toe nails and the damn pony's too.

 

[Joel Tunnah]

If the guitars you mention were crap underneath the distressing, then you would have a point - but they're actually really good guitars, and the "relic'ing" is done tastefully. They really look like a 40 year old, heavily used guitar. It's simply an aesthetic choice, no different than any other. A real 50's Gibson or Fender electric can run 5+ digits. This is a way for the average person to have a taste of that, for a fraction of the cost.

Probably not relevant to those god-awful looking hats at Millers though.

Also this isn't a new idea, nor symptomatic of societal decay, IMO. When I was a kid, the first thing we did with our brand new Keds was rub dirt all over the white trim and laces - so they would look old. And going to school with new-looking jeans was to risk serious ridicule. I forced my mother to wash them a dozen times first. That was in the late 70's.

 

[tonyb]

If the guitars you mention were crap underneath the distressing, then you would have a point - but they're actually really good guitars, and the "relic'ing" is done tastefully. They really look like a 40 year old, heavily used guitar. It's simply an aesthetic choice, no different than any other. A real 50's Gibson or Fender electric can run 5+ digits. This is a way for the average person to have a taste of that, for a fraction of the cost.

Let's not confuse that "taste" of a thing for the thing itself, though. Those "distressed" guitars may indeed be decent enough instruments (I wouldn't know either way), but there is no denying that they are made to appear to be something other than what they are. So yeah, I still "have a point," whether you agree with it or not. Furthermore, that point is not dependent upon (nor have anything to do with, for that matter) whether or not those guitars are "crap," as you put it.

 

[MissHuff]

It's kind of funny that some things come pre-soiled or distressed. If you walked into my little cousin's high school you would note that all of their jeans are distressed and look old while their baseball caps and sneakers look like they just came out of the box. I've personally seen my cousin spend hours painstakingly cleaning his sneakers and baseball caps and its too bad he doesn't put his time into... say.. learning how to clean a couple of old fedoras for me..

 

[Red Beard]

Being a musician, I don't think it's fair to compare distressed instruments to hats or any clothing. The following may be just "slightly" fftopic: , but the musician in me demands it.

Instruments play better when they're older and heavily worn, any musician would attest to this. Older instruments also sound better due to the wood being a better cut, drying with age, constant vibration and magnetic aging on the pickups, which brings the high price. For instance, a 1959 Gibson Les Paul sells for in excess of $200,000 on today's market. So the next best thing to owning an actual vintage guitar is owning one that plays/feels/looks like it is. You get all the playing comfort, just not the same tone.

Distressed instruments also date back to something like the 15th Century and over the years it's become quite a work of art. For modern examples, see Vince Cunetto era Relics for Fender and Tom Murphy for Gibson, if anybody's interested.

Sorry for the microrant. Just wanted to clear a few things up on this side of the fence. Back to your regularly scheduled program. . .

 

[tonyb]

Yeah, Miss Huff, I gotta laugh at myself when I think about some of the stuff I once obsessed about. But, you know, I was a kid then, so I gotta cut myself some slack.
It's not that I don't still pay what might fairly be called an inordinate amount of attention to matters that I know to be of very little actual consequence. I guess that's what makes it fun, though. It's kind of like sports -- you can get wrapped up in the game, and take a break from your worries, and know that however it comes out, it's just a game.

 

[Dinerman]

If you want a pre-soiled hat, though I don't know why you would, how hard could it be to just rub it in your garden, or soak it in some salt water?

 

[mingoslim]

Why settle for factory distressed when I can provide the real thing?

Now I'm wondering how long it will be until new pickup trucks come pre-scratched and dented from the factory, perhaps with a bale of hay as a $500 "upgrade."

I would be more than happy to trade you my old, dinged-up, red, short-bed Chevy for a new one . . . Mine is already broken in . . .

 

[akaBruno]

I do love the way that threads take on a life of their own.

BTW, I love pre-washed jeans. Save me from some nasty rash.