| DID YOU KNOW THAT NATIONAL HAT DAY WAS LAST WEEK?
The media was tuned into this hat homage and the Longview, Texas Journal ran an extensive story about hats. Don Rongione, of Bolman Hat Company was quoted in the article.
The article is below, if you want to read it.
Les Hassell/News-Journal Photo
Co-owner Mike Helms blocks a hat at Mike's Custom Hatters.
To top it off: Headwear lovers sing their virtues
By GLENN EVANS
Hats once sat on the top of the world.
A mandatory element of American attire as late as the 1960s, the hat somehow got knocked off the social dress code around the time four moptops invaded from England.
There are those among us, though, who never took them off and will have something to tip when National Hat Day dawns Friday.
"National Hat Day? I didn't even know they had one," former Longview Mayor Lou Galosy said, and if anyone would know about a day for hats, it would be a lifelong hatter such as Galosy. "Even when I was a little guy growing up in St. Louis, I had a hat. I can't imagine getting dressed without a hat."
At a spry 86, Galosy grew up when every day was hat day. It still is, as far as he's concerned.
"It completes the outfit," he said. "You've got to have a coat and a tie there, and (a hat) was just part of me. Besides, I'm bald-headed, and it gets cold."
A warm feeling
That kind of practicality was a common reason men in this story gave for covering their heads. Longview school board member Ted Beard hides his head from the elements whenever the mercury dips or the skies open up.
Beard's favorite is called a spitfire, a beret-like cap often seen on actor Samuel L. Jackson's brow. Like Jackson, Beard often turns his spitfire backward, sometimes adding a stylish angle.
"I wear hats in the wintertime, because I'm from Detroit," Beard said. "I grew up in the '60s, the '60s and '70s, and I can remember my father wearing hats. And he wears one now."
Theodore Beard of Detroit was wearing the same type of hat when his son visited for Thanksgiving.
"And I think he wears it out of necessity when it's cold outside," Beard added.
Longview businesswoman Vicki Jones is an all-weather hat maven feeling less and less in the minority these days.
"I do see more and more women with hats," she said. "Ten years ago it was me and the 90-year-olds at church, and now everywhere you go there's going to be one or two women in hats."
Jones has become a student of hat culture.
"When women make a compliment that is what women say, 'I wish I could wear hats.' This is what men say: 'I love hats. You look gorgeous. I wish my wife would wear hats.' People that would never compliment you often will stop you and say how pretty you look (in a hat). It's just an era, a time gone by, and I'm glad it's coming back."
Arc of the hatter
Don Rongione sees the arc of hat popularity spanning decades and even centuries. As a trustee with the Headwear Association, he sees the art of headwear from Adamstown, Pa., where he is president and chief executive officer of the 142-year-old Bollman Hat Co.
"Through the 18th and 19th centuries, people wore hats as part of a symbol, as part of the uniform of the day," he said. "And that continued through the 1950s.” Rongione offers theories on why hats fell off American heads in the late '50s and early '60s.
World War II veterans returning to civilian life might have rejected hats after being forced to wear helmets, he said. The '60s arrived, and John F. Kennedy charmed the nation while rarely wearing a hat — it was wrongly rumored that JFK did not wear a hat to his inauguration, but Rongione said the president-elect had one in his hand.
"Rock 'n' roll started to take place, and people were wearing their hair longer," Rongione said. "They didn't want to hide their hair.
"I am happy to say that young people are returning to wearing brimmed hats in greater numbers," he added, noting the thin-brimmed hats regularly seen on pop culture leaders such as Justin Timberlake and Brad Pitt.
The stars' hat dance illustrates something that's prevented Jones from cleaning out a hat collection shelved from floor to ceiling in a special closet.
"About every 20 years, just like clothing, a hat will come back in style," he said. "It takes a certain level of confidence for women to wear hats. But, once people start telling you how pretty you are and how pretty your hat looks, you don't have to have confidence anymore."
Keeping the faith
Even during years of hat drought, ball caps served as sentinels on the tradition, at least in a man's world. Rongione said ball caps, often referred to as gimme caps because restaurants and retailers will give them away as free advertising, took on new prestige in the mid-'90s. Plastic strips with punch holes on the back of gimme caps, which allowed the wearer to customize the fit, melted in favor of cloth straps with a metal buckle. So did Velcro fasteners in the back. Those Velcro and the plastic punchy holes are now creeping back as fashion statements of their own.
"There's a little bit of a movement toward getting those back, those punchy holes," Rongione said. "It's retro."
Gimme caps were not alone in the breach. Cowboy hats never rode off into the sunset either, and a new roundup began after a certain 1980 movie.
"We need another 'Urban Cowboy' is what we need," said Glenda Wilkerson, longtime employee at Mike's Customer Hatters and wife of co-owner, Chuck Wilkerson.
Actually, they don't really need another "Urban Cowboy" to rope heads into 10-gallon land.
"You know," Wilkerson began, "these ranch hands on all these ranches around here, they buy hats. They buy two or three a year. Sometimes, ladies come to buy their husbands a hat, and they start trying on hats. And they are so much fun to try on."
Namesake owner Mike Helms and partner Wilkerson regularly accommodate customers who bring photos of hats they want built. The pair also has taken to beating the bushes at stock shows and are gearing up for the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Houston's stock show is on the horizon.
Those kids
Bob Miller, owner of Sacred Spur Ranch in East Mountain, admits his reason for wearing cowboy hats sounds cliche: "My heroes have always been cowboys," Miller said, quoting a Willie Nelson standard.
The rancher and restaurant owner was married in a cowboy hat, but he knows there are other customs out there. He increasingly sees them.
"I'll go in a restaurant, and you'll see some young kid with tattoos down to his waist and he's got a Ben Hogan hat on," Miller said, referring to the jaunty driving cap worn by the late golf legend. "(Wearing a hat) has always been a statement of personality — how you feel about yourself and society."
Hatter Wilkerson also sees young people, even young country people, straying from the cowboy hat tradition.
"It's funny," she said. "A movie like 'Tombstone' can come out and all of a sudden they all want to wear little derbies. For six or eight months, we couldn't keep enough derbies. These country and western bands, the guys coming up ... The little wool hats that they pull down, even country western bands wear them. I need to start knitting little wool hats
What's your hat size?
Unlike with shoes, men's and women's hat sizes are calculated uniformly, so to speak.
Don Rongione, president of the 142-year-old Bollman Hat Co. and a trustee with the Headwear Association, says 7 1/8 is the average men's hat size. The average size for women is 7 even.
"I'm 52. The people in our generation probably don't know their hat size," he said. "More often than not, our fathers and grandfathers knew their hat size. And perhaps our children are starting to know their hat size in greater numbers."
He supplied a hat sizing formula that sounds eerily like a high school geometry lesson.
Remember pi-R-square, the formula for finding how much space is inside a circle?
Well, this isn't that formula.
It's its sister calculation — 2 times pi times radius or 2piR — which tells brainy people how far it is around a circle.
Hat size is determined in reverse, by first learning how far it is around your head.
To find hat size, wrap a tape measure around your head, about an inch above the eyebrows, Rongione said. Divide that number by pi, the mysterious constant that has no ending decimal but usually gets rounded down to 3.14.
If your noggin is 22 inches around, you wear a size 7 hat, which is the average women's hat size. For the guys, at 7 1/8, it works out to 22.3725 inches all the way around.
TALKING ABOUT HATS
"Cock your hat — angles are attitudes." - Frank Sinatra
"I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it's a conversation piece." - Hedda Hopper
"Here's your hat, what's your hurry?" - Anonymous
"My papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home." - The Temptations
"Live your life, do your work, then take your hat." - Henry David Thoreau
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