Vote Now for Hat Person of the Year

Voting begins today for The Headwear Association's "Hat Person of the Year."

This year's nominees are: Johnny Depp, Hugh Jackman, Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani, Kate Hudson and Nicole Richie.

The winner will be announced on National Hat Day, January 15.

To vote: www.theheadwearassociation.org

Today - Headwear for the Homeless event

December 10 -- To help disadvantaged people keep warm this winter, The Headwear Association will donate today thousands of hats to homeless shelters and non-profits nationwide.

Participants in this year's campaign includes:

Artex Knitting Mills, Bollman Hats, Dorfman-Pacific, Grace Hats, Modern Millinery, NES Enterprises, Outdoor Cap, Philadelphia Rapid Transit, San Diego Hat and Swan Hats.

Hats and Literature: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Illustration by "Phiz" from the 1950 Modern Library Edition of David Copperfield. Top Hats were de rigour in 19th Century England.




Readers of the HAT BLOG and other Information and Resources pages at VillageHatShop.com [see the top navigation bar] know that headwear’s role, as symbol and metaphor, in art and literature is vast, stretching back to the beginning of humankind. One finds never-ending examples of hats being used to convey nuanced – or not so nuanced – ideas. Here are a few examples plucked from my latest read, Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.



Mr. Dick is a masterfully wrought character. The only comparable example in fiction that comes to mind is Chauncey Gardiner portrayed by Peter Sellers in the movie Being There. Dickens: "This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought the most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age. It was long before Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded; and even when he and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk together by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which was known as the Doctor’s Walk, Mr. Dick would pull off his hat at intervals to show his respect for wisdom and knowledge."



David Copperfield was madly in love with Dora. He was obsessed with everything associated with her. Copperfield: "I never saw such curls – how could I, for there never were such curls! – as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As to the straw hat and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I could only have hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession it would have been!" He references Dora’s hat and her curls again on the pages that follow. I do agree that the relationship of a women’s hat and her hair can be very attractive. As a hat merchant, and someone who has been asked his opinion on matters of this kind hundreds of times, I have often stated words to the effect, and to many a woman, "I like the way that hat works with your hair." Women in hats were alluring in Dicken’s day, and for many men, they still are.



In a most dramatic passage, Mr. Peggotty decides to commit his life to finding his niece who ran off with David’s friend, "I’m a-going to seek her, fur and wide." As he finishes a poignant soliloquy and is ready to depart, this description follows: "He said this solemnly, bareheaded; then putting on his hat, he went down the stairs and away." That simple act of putting on a hat and leaving had a kind of literary power in the 19th Century, you see it in pre-1960 films as well, but is virtually gone in this day and age. [Note the slightly different uses of bareheadedness in the Mr. Dick passage and in this one. Mr. Dick refrained from wearing a hat as deference to power, much the same as a king’s subject would remove his hat in the company of the king. Mr. Peggotty’s deference was to the solemnity of his discourse and implied an oath (to a power even greater than a king).]



The book is full of references to hats. Here’s my last example, a slight variation of a metaphor that is in my collection of Hat Metaphors and Similes. Mrs. Crupp, Davids’ landlady in London, is eccentric, nutty in fact. One of her paranoid preoccupations is her "… constitutional objection to spies, intruders, and informers. She named no names, she said—let them the cap fitted wear it . . ."



Sleuthing for hats in literature is quite simple; references are easy to find. Social status, religious observance, challenge to the enemy, temperament, emotion, financial means, geographic identity, historical period, hobbies and interests, and much more is illuminated by the use of hats. As R. Turner Wilcox in her forward to the classic The Mode in Hats and Headdress writes, "No part of costume is so universally important as the headdress, which is worn even when body garments are dispensed with, as the appearance of the aborigines abundantly proves." With the force of expression that hats intrinsically carry, it is no wonder why artists and writers use them copiously.



Fred Belinsky

VillageHatShop.com

Headwear Hall of Fame Announces New Inductees

The Headwear Association today announced the newest inductees to the Headwear Hall of Fame. The famous hat-wearing winners are:

• Aretha Franklin
• Cameron Diaz
• Carlos Santana
• Gwen Stefani
• Ne-Yo
• Payne Stewart

Winners will be formally inducted into The Headwear Hall of Fame during The Headwear Association's annual gala dinner on Thursday, March 17, 2011 at the Central Park Boathouse in New York City.

Tips for Buying a Sun-Safe Hat

The Headwear Association recommends the following tips when buying a sun-protective hat:

- Size: A hat with a minimum of 2 1/2" brim can provide adequate sun protection for the neck, face and ears

- Shape: Hat shapes that protect better against ultraviolet radiation (UVR) are ones that curve down to follow the contours of the head and neck

- Material: The material of a hat should be lightweight and breathable. Fabrics should be closed weave straw, raffia, cloth or felt

Hat Day in the Sun Was a Success

The Headwear Association distributed thousands of free sun protective hats nationwide on Friday June 18th. These hats were given away to generate public awareness of how wide-brimmed hats can protect against sun damage, skin cancer and premature aging.

Here is a group of people protecting themselves from the sun in their new wide-brimmed hats at Chicago's Oak Street Beach.

Straw Hats

There is a book - perhaps even a serious scholarly research project - waiting to be written on this rich and varied subject.  People have been harvesting plants endemic to their region of the world and fashioning the derived natural material into headwear as long as there have been humankind.  Today, go virtually anywhere in the world and one will find the latest iterations of this very long history of making hats from plants.

Some, like people on the western coast of South America (primarily what is now Ecuador), have taken this to the level of a highly refined craft.  Carludovica palmata (paja toquilla to the locals) is harvested, cleaned, bleached, dried, split length-wise into various width sizes with the finest being the size of thread, bundled according to size and quality, sold to weavers who can take months to weave a single hat, sold again to middlemen who sell yet again to hatters who finally block the material into any number of popular shapes, finally adding sweatbands and trimmings.  These straw hats make their way to the market in most of the world as Panama hats (not from Panama but so named because of the hat's trading route explosion onto world markets during the building of the Panama Canal). 

Other cultures have similar traditions.  We here at the Village Hat Shop have employees whose cultural roots are from The Philippines.  One day I was presented a finely woven straw hat traditional to the native people of Negros Occidental.  The material comes from the inside leaves of the acaba tree.  The hat is light and airy and, like Panama hats, the product of painstaking work.  The people wear the hat for protection from the blazing sun of the region as well as for provincial festivals.  Buntal, a popular straw hat material in North America and Europe -also fine and light weight-comes from yet another Filipino plant, the buri palm tree, from Baliuag, Bulacan.  The list of exquisite straw hats made by indigenous people from endemic materials is very long.  The Native Americans of the Northwest make a cedar bark hat.  The native peoples from California make a hat from pine needles.  Raffia is one of the most popular straw materials in the world.  The island of Madagascar is the home of high quality raffia, but variations of the plant are also found in Africa.  Many of the beautifully adorned crowns of feathers, shells, animal parts, and skins that we associate with African arts are started from a base of raffia straw.  Baku, another lightweight, very fine, and expensive material that is in high demand in wealthier countries, comes from the taipot palm in Malabar and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  For my money, one of the best straw hat values in the world today is the very durable sewn-braid palm leaf hat from Guatemala, yet another example of a plant and a people in an enduring relationship.

Milan straw has a complicated and controversial history.  The original material (if I have my facts straight) was a hand-braided wheat straw from Italy (hence the name Milan from the Italian city of the same name).  Real milan, the natural material, is still available but becoming prohibitively expensive for most hat buyers.  The Chinese make something synthetic and call it milan; this is mostly what is found in the hat market today.  [Synthetic "straws" are all over the place and not the topic of this article other than this: if you are a buyer of what you assume is a "straw" hat, beware.]  The Japanese make a material from hemp (I need a botanist to tell me if hemp bears a close relationship to the original) that is a natural material facsimile of milan.

Some cultures whip up a hat in minutes from plants in their area.  When I visited Tahiti in 1981, the local people would impress tourists by cutting palm fronds and weaving, from the unaltered material, a good hat for sun protection in 5 to 10 minutes.  The hat starts out as green and becomes brown over time.  When it finally becomes too brittle to properly function, one simply tosses it and makes another.  Many cultures - likely the majority - operate somewhere between the extremes of complicated Panama hat makingand simple Tahitian hat making.  Perhaps, from a global perspective, the most iconic hat on the planet fits this description-the conical hat we associate with Asia.  The shape has likely prevailed throughout time and place because of the simplicity of its design and supreme functionality.  I have witnessed the hat as good rain gear, excellent sun protection, and a good wind break (one simply tilts into the wind).  It's very strong albeit lightweight; a structural engineer can explain why.  The straw material varies from place to place.  I own Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai variations of the style.  Each is made well and with minimal effort in order to achieve the hat's purpose.  Sometimes, one will find elaborations on the theme, but for the most part the hat is made to function well in the weather.

The American straw hat making industry traces its origins to Betsy Metcalf.  Betsy may not have made the first straw hat in America, but in 1798, at age twelve, she made a straw bonnetthat is believed to be the first documented straw hat made in the USA.  Her next move immortalized her.  She then "learned all who wished to make bonnets", thus launching an industry.  I've seen pictures of these early bonnets and the straw, neatly hand-sewn in rows, looks like "straw"-the stuff we see in bales found on farms.

Many straws are closely associated with a specific hat style.  Coburg straw is associated with Italian Skimmers (also known as Boaters or Sailor Straws-think barbershop quartet).  I don't know which plant species Coburg straw comes from, but hats made from this material predate synthetics, so I am quite confident it is a natural straw layered in plies making the skimmer hard and durable.  Shantung, the straw we associate with better western hats, has a history similar to milan.  Its origins may be natural, but now it is a man-made material.  Although many people associate a "Panama Hat" with the fedora hat style, this material is made into virtually all men's and women's hat styles.  The optimo style - where there is a crease running laterally on the top of the crown - likely evolved from the natural crease created when a soft, unblocked, good quality Panama hat is rolled for storage or portability.  Sinamay, the product of a process of preparing the acaba plant from The Philippines (see above) that includes weaving the straw on a loom has become a material of choice for women's straw hats.  In fact, it is the most popular millinery material in the hat-loving UK.

Many years ago, I traded for a hat made by the Cofans from the Agua Rico River of the upper Amazon in eastern Ecuador.  This crown's impressive feature is the green iridescent beetle casings that ring the headpiece.  The casings are affixed to a sewn plant material from the area.  Amazonia, First Nation Americans, remote regions of The Steppes, tribes throughout Africa, East Asia, India, etc. all have hat making traditions.  Simply documenting whatever has survived into the 21st Century would be enough to justify a scholarly project.  However, why did some cultures elevate this craft to art and others simply whipped off functional apparel?  Is there a clue to other elements of cultural development and values that can be gleaned by this study?  How did human cultivation of plants for hat making change an area's botany?  Were hats used for trade or were they considered useless outside of one's indigenous region (in part because hats were so closely connected with one's rank in the society, or religion, etc.)?  Good questions could make a long list.

I've read that historians believe hats were the first apparel worn by humans.  These hats of course were made from plants or animals.  Where's the book on this extraordinary subject?  Much of the material is still out there. 
 
Enjoy your hats,
 
Fred Belinsky
VillageHatShop.com

What New Trends Will Emerge From This Year's Derby Season?

As May 1st fast approaches, and horse racing and the headwear industry gears up for another exciting derby season, I can’t help but wonder “What new trends will emerge from this year’s Derby series”? Nowadays it is difficult to open a fashion magazine or turn on an awards show and not see an A-list actor or actress pushing the envelope with some type of new cutting edge chapeau, but the derby is where this tradition all started. Chances are the derby might have been the originator of that stylish topper.

If you don’t think that the derby events have as much to do about celebrity, fashion, and emerging trends, don’t take my word for it. Even the Kentucky Derby’s own official website shows as many hats on its home page as they do horses. There is no doubt that the stars seated on “Millionaire’s Row” wearing their lavish hats and posing for the camera help to sell the event as much as the actual race does.

So while we gear up for another grand derby season, we insiders are as much a spectator as anyone outside of the headwear industry. We can only guess as to which styles, colors, brands will adorn the stars heads. We will gaze at the beautiful large brims, and sinamay cloches, and revere in the waves of classic panama stingy brims and fedoras. When it is all over, we’ll go back to the drawing board and try to figure out what trends we predicted we would see, and where we missed the boat. We may even be inspired to go out and create a new masterpiece that will become next year’s millinery sensation. Either way, it all starts at the derby.

-Ryan
Hats in the Belfry

THA DINNER TONIGHT

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the THA Dinner tonight in NYC. Looks like we have a nice crowd (125+) for our new venue - Central Park Boathouse.

I am not sure which hat to wear...fedora or trilby.

My last event as THA President....good luck to Courtney Bush.

-David Goldman

THA Celebrates 102nd Year Anniversary

The Headwear Association (THA) celebrates its 102nd year anniversary with a gala dinner at the Central Park Boathouse, E. 72nd St & Park Drive in New York on Thursday, March 18th at 6pm.

Highlights of the evening include:

-- Induction of new members of the Headwear Hall of Fame. 2010 inductees are: Humphrey Bogart, Brad Pitt, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Jessica Parker, Audrey Hepburn and Jennifer Lopez

-- To honor outgoing THA president David Goldman, with the David Lieberman Award

-- To present the annual Hat Retailer of the Year Award to Martin Mann of Hats Plus in Chicago

-- To present the Ben Rosenthal Award to S.H. Baik of Young An, a leader in the headwear industry

For more information, please contact THA's publicist Susan W. Littman, SWPR at 312-222-1337 or susan@swpr.biz

Hats Make a Perfect Gift for Valentine’s Day

According to a survey released by The National Retail Federation (NRF), shoppers will be more practical and economical this Valentine's Day. In fact, more people indicated that they will chose winter accessories and other clothing options in place of jewelry this year.

With budgets tight and Valentine's Day around the corner, The Headwear Association recommends buying your sweetie a stylish hat.

Popular styles for men: fedora, stingy brim, newsboy/ivy cap and western.

Popular styles for women: cloche, beret, newsboy/ivy cap and western.

Every Hat Has A Story - What's Yours?

Whether your hat has been passed down through generations, bought for a special occasion, or just really looks good on you...tell us in 100 words or less why your hat is so memorable and you can be eligible for a chance to win a free hat if it's posted on our website.

Send your essay along with a photo of you wearing your hat to: susan@swpr.biz