“Dude that’s a great looking hat.” “Yo, bro, that hat is killing it.” “That hat looks good on you.” These were some of the many comments I received when I first showed up to work wearing my hat. I guess in the land of cowboy hats and camouflage ball caps, something that is neither is sure to stand out.
For quite some time, I searched for a fedora style hat that would hearken back to a time and place of Kephart and others. Those outdoors years of way back when are what’s in my soul. I wanted something that would withstand the elements, retain its shape, was soft, pliable and comfortable. After looking at various online hat sellers, I stumbled on a hat that seemed to check the boxes. The Stetson “Explorer” looked good, is a 100% wool and crushable, which equated to being comfortable. The brim is wide enough to offer some protection from the sun, but not overly wide that the hat will get knocked off my head as I blaze through the woods and brush. The gray color is neutral enough that it can go with just about any other article of clothing. “Wow! I really sounded like some sort of fashionista with that last sentence.”
The bow stitched to the sweatband on the inside of hats seems to have an interesting history.
One interesting story I’ve heard is the bow is a memorial symbol for hat makers of old who used mercury in the hat making process and hence suffered mercury poisoning. The term “Mad Hatter,” or “Mad as a Hatter” was the term coined for those makers affected.
The other story I’ve heard is back in the day hat sizes weren’t as accurate as they are today. To help hats better fit the wearer, the sweatband would have a lace running through it and could be pulled to tighten and relaxed to loosen so the hat could better fit the wearers head. The lace would be finished off in a decorative bow. Today, the bow is just a holdover of that story, with no real function.
I don’t know which story is real, maybe they both are.
