#5 Hipster Fisherman Hats

-I have always been unexplainably infuriated, yet strangely fascinated by these hats. Why are they always worn at a jaunty angle?

-They are often complemented by the thin, waxed veneer of a barbour jacket and a pair of cigarette leg jeans that don’t quite meet a pair of Doctor Marten’s airwair boots, thus leaving a gap revealing pasty little legs. Judging from this, as well as their size, I have concluded that these little hats really can’t do a great deal for helping to keep warm.

-Where, in the name of Christ, did this style originate from? Not that I want to declare myself a beacon of sartorial knowledge, but I generally subscribe to the idea that the fashionable affectations of artsy types are usually derived from some kind of basis in 20^th century pop cultural imagery; 

Plaid shirts = Kurt Cobain / vintage Americana

Pompadour haircuts = rockabilly / rhythm & blues

Trenchcoats = film noir

Big spectacles = Buddy Holly / Graham Coxon,

Ironic moustaches = Dali / The Marlboro Man

Customization / intentional dishevelment = Richard Hell / '77 punk

…and so on, and so forth. 

-Of course, this is a crude and very basic observation. It's pointless trying to literally trace and pinpoint the origins of every detail in something so vacuous as 'hipster' fashion. But I imagine you see what I'm getting at. These little hats that I constantly see, whizzing past at the speed of fixed-gear bicycles, seem to have fallen out of the post-ironic blue on to the heads of every person who's ever read Vice magazine. Which is a shame for them, because they look ludicrous.

-The only thing I can think of is that these hip young movers and shakers are really into Captain Birdseye, or the kind of burglars you see in children’s cartoons, with striped outfits and bags of loot strung over their backs.

-This leads me to conclude that, in originating a style that makes the adherent look like a strange, nerdy, fictional thief / a fisherman on laundry day, perhaps these guys have come up with something fresh and unique – an achievement I have long considered impossible. This would make me feel jealous, enraged and inadequate, but it doesn’t, because I can’t get over how hilariously stupid I find these little hats.

 

*Just a note about hat-wearing in general; contrary to popular male dresscode, I would like to point out that in most cases, you should not wear a trilby or pork-pie hat unless you are Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, or a Delta bluesman circa 1920-1970. Similarly, the ridiculous, gnome-like big woolly tea-cosy hats that generally accompany bicep hugging t-shirts from All Saints (with necklines that dip low enough to show pectoral cleavage and terrible tattoos of meaningless credos rendered in cursive script) are really stupid. And always worn at unnecessary times, like summer, or in a bar.