Hats

I wore this beret not in spite of, but because of, school picture day.

It was my coolest accessory, and I wanted to look gooooood.

When I wore it, I felt like Mary-Kate and/or Ashley. Or maybe even Gia, Stephanie Tanner's rebellious friend. It made me feel grown-up and popular.

So when the photographer's assistant tried to get me to take it off, I answered with a firm: "No." This middle-aged bimbo wasn't going to ruin my school photo. Oh no. I was wearing the beret, and that was final.

But when the photos arrived in my cubby months later, I was surprised by the results. Why did the picture not reflect how cool I knew I looked? Was that what I really looked like? Were my bangs that messy the whole day? I was crushed.

All of this brings me to tonight's topic: hats.

• Baseball hats = American as apple pie. Today, in line at a jam-packed Starbucks, I realised that every man in there between the ages of 18 and 58 was wearing a baseball cap. When Andy moves across, how long will it take until he cracks? It may seem very "American" to him, but won't he want to fit in?

• Fedora vs. Trilby. What you may think of as a fedora is actually a trilby. It's an important distinction to make. Trilbys have been giving fedoras a bad name for a while now. 

• Hat comeback. Will hats ever make there way back into the mainstream? Not just for special occasions, but part of everyday life? Like in Mad Men? I hope so. It's hard to imagine that West Coast America could become any more casual, so the only option left is to start getting dressier. A few generations from now, and we may be back to early-1900s hat culture, when even criminals and homeless men wore suits and hats. Heck, in the 18th century, all men—aristocrats and laborers alike—wore top hats! Imagine if we circled back to that. 

Vintage mugshot from Australia, 1921.
Image via Twisted Sifter via The Sydney Justice & Police Museum

Brunel in a sea of top hats at the launch of the SS Great Eastern, 1857.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

That's it! I'm still a little jet-legged. The only cure is time. I'll be back to my awake-self next week.

The sunsets in Kenmore are lovely. 

Goodnight,
Margaret