Courage to Wear a Fedora

[Zombie_61]

...Was he in 1941? I'll have to watch that again- my Japanese wife has never seen it, should make her chuckle.

Yes, Slim Pickens was in 1941 playing a character named Hollis P. Wood. It's not a big role, however, so anyone watching the movie just for Mr. Pickens will be disappointed.

 

[OddHatter]

It's changing for me, and each phase adds to my confidence. For me, it began on doctor's orders. Then I wanted to look good too. And that brought to mind the B+W films from mid-century. So I looked for classic styles among retail offerings. Bought a bunch. And then I became enthusiastic beyond just having a hat to wear. So I feel myself moving in the direction of collector.

I very much see myself going along these exact lines as I have slowly begun a collection of my own that I shift around with from day to day. I'm getting much of my inspiration from classic noir - my fav - especially Bogart (no surprise there). My self-consciousness is ebbing. I like to think I'm beginning to wear the hat and not the other way around.

 

[OddHatter]

Like you I was rather timid about wearing a hat. I have always had a western straw or felt, but even limited their use. A few years back I started with some of the Tilley hats in the spring for rain protection and shade and got to like them, and got a few nice comments so gravitated to one of the straw fedora s from Panama Bob. I could not believe the admiring looks and positive comments, especially from real young ladies, like upper teens , lower twenties, too an old guy, I'll be 69 next month. I next picked up a couple of Arkubra hats , then some custom made from Art Fawcett( that's the way to go) and one of the true Indy models from Steve Delk. I even have some cheap cotton & nylon mesh models from the feed and seed that I use for yard work. I hardely every step out the door without putting on a hat, usually a fedora style. My wife likes the way they look on me, and being in E. Texas likes the style because she can spot me easily across a busy store among the western styles and gimme caps.

Choose your style and wear it, you will be self conscious for a while, but will quickly get to the point where wearing one will be second nature. Also as some mentioned in a earlier reply, try one of the open road styles. I have several including one 20x Stetson felt and a couple in genuine Panama straw, not the Shantung (paper straw) and all have the brims turned down giving more of a fedora effect than the western cattleman styling.

Thank you kindly for the sage advice. I have picked up a few fedoras of various styles/colors out of the bay recently and am having fun exploring my "style". Lost out on a bid for an open road, but the fedoras are really growing on me so I think I may just pass on the westerns all together. I must say I'm earning my sea legs with this as I'm slowing getting to where I feel strange now without a hat outside and I've only been wearing them for just a couple months - like I said earlier, I've made the commitment and I don't regret it.

Thanks again all for the confidence-boosting experiences you've been sharing with me. It doesn't fall on deaf ears, I promise you... and maybe it will help others newbies to the forum as well.

Dan

 

[OddHatter]

As my Husband would say, "stick around, this is the place to be"!!!!:bounce:

+1

 

[Redshoes51]

Good evening... I joined FL a while back and this is my first comment... I found a great hat (New Old Stock) and shaped it somewhat into a form I liked... and started wearing it last Fall. I get great responses to it, so like most of you, I am wanting more hats. A lady came up and started a conversation with me last week... and told me that she thought I was a Renaissance Man...

Great comments... very few odd looks...

I'm trying to learn my way around the Lounge... I am enjoying it. It's good to be here!

 

[jdbenson]

My advice is to take your time. Give yourself the time to discover who you are and what makes you happy and then give that gift of happiness to yourself. You like hats? Then you should wear them.

After my divorce I realized I no longer knew who I was or what I wanted or even what I liked. I decided to find out. My journey took me from dressing and acting like a clone of the mean to being ME. Much to my surprise, no one was critical when I stopped wearing polo shirts and started wearing vintage camp shirts. No one complained when I wore two-tone spectators. No one said I was wrong when I started wearing high waited pleated pants. In fact any comment I got was almost always positive. "Nice shirt!" or "Dude, you rock those vintage clothes!"

One odd thing has happened...If for some reason I DON'T dress vintage I DO get comments. I wore khaki's and a golf shirt to work one day and I actually had a co-worker say to me, "You're dressed so...normal. What's wrong?" LOL.

 

[Redshoes51]

"After my divorce I realized I no longer knew who I was or what I wanted or even what I liked. I decided to find out. My journey took me from dressing and acting like a clone of the mean to being ME."

This was me to a 'T'... it just takes a while to figure it out...

~shoes~

 

[HeyMoe]

Much to my surprise, no one was critical when I stopped wearing polo shirts and started wearing vintage camp shirts. No one complained when I wore two-tone spectators. No one said I was wrong when I started wearing high waited pleated pants. In fact any comment I got was almost always positive. "Nice shirt!" or "Dude, you rock those vintage clothes!"

I get those all the time at work. My wife, however, says "you are the only person I know that wants to dress like an old man!" LOL

 

[Joao Encarnado]

As my Husband would say, "stick around, this is the place to be"!!!!:bounce:

+1 and you know why!

 

[Damon Falzone]

OddHatter, like so many others, I've had the skin cancer scare also and have been read the 'riot act' by my doctor. So, I use sun screen daily and wear a brimmed hat when in the sun. (Hats work nicely in winter, too.) It seems an easy way to prevent a recurrence and look stylish at the same time. What do you care what others think. Have you taken a good look at what they're wearing? Please.... And in my wife's wise words, "No one's looking at you!". She's right. Rock on.

 

[OddHatter]

What can I say? When you're right, you're right, and I know you all are right. I really shouldn't care what others think - and I often felt that I didn't - but I guess I did. Anyhow I'm glad to report that, like many of you, the more I wear my hats, the more I feel comfortable. I'm at a point now where I don't even think about it, so I guess I'm getting there. In fact, I spend more time now thinking about what I'm going to add to my collection than I do worrying about wearing them! That actually makes me smile a bit while I type this.

Thanks jd and RedShoes for the poignant reminder. I was actually thinking earlier today how my hat has become a bit of a symbol of personal freedom for me. How it represents how I no longer care what others think (or more accurately what I think others may think) about me or basically living in a state of fear or anxiety. Maybe that sounds a bit over-the-top but I think when I allow myself the courage - hell, the right - to wear whatever I want when I want, I kinda feel like I've taken some of my own power back. It reminds me of the times when I was younger, before the world beat me up a bit, and I felt I had the world by the brass big ones, you know?

I guess I feel for the first time in a long time like I'm able to rediscover the man I once was (or felt I was) and take that freedom to move forward again. After feeling like I was stagnant for so long, losing focus, gaining weight, you name it, I feel that the self-discipline it takes for me to put on that hat regardless of my inner-conflict and silly concerns has actually helped me to regain my focus and move forward with a more positive energy; kinda like I'm a better man for it. A freer man for it.

So yeah, this hat I put on my head is getting easier and easier each day because it's feeling lighter and lighter; I'm feeling freer. I never realized I had such inner nonsense until this whole "now I gotta wear a wide-brim hat" stuff happened to me, but I'm learning a lot about myself in the process and I really thank all of you for sharing your thoughts with me. Sorry for waxing in deep thought a little there, but I guess some of the comments hit a nerve.

Anyhow, I'm gonna have a couple fingers of a single malt and pull some cigar smoke in me a bit before it's nighty-nighty for me. Again, thanks to you all for taking the time to comment.

Dan

 

[OddHatter]

Sorry, duplicate post. I guess I'm free enough to still mess up, too, eh?

Dan

 

[H Weinstein]

So many great and supportive comments following your post! Glad to see you're feeling better about wearing hats as the replies rolled in. And, yes, many of us wear them as sun protection, too. (I do.)

Like many in the Lounge gang, I also initially felt self-conscious wearing a "real" hat (especially western hats in the east!). But I decided I like the way I look in my hats, and I never cared much about looking like everyone else anyway.

Whether I wore my lone fedora (Indy style) or a western, the more I wore them, the more positive comments I got. Ranging from a 13-yr-old kid on my block to a man in my mother's retirement community. Although the truth is, most people probably don't notice or care if some guy is wearing a hat.

So be bold! If you like how you look in hats, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. But you may be surprised how many other people actually admire those hats on you.

 

[VetPsychWars]

Just noticed your posting. I also am in Wisconsin. Trust me, enough older gentlemen compliment you and enough young ladies say, "I like your hat!" and you won't worry any more.

I have gotten a negative comment from exactly one person, and I started wearing hats 25 years ago. She learned to shut it when she saw that I didn't care about her opinion.

Stand tall and walk proud, brother.

Tom

 

[HeyMoe]

Just noticed your posting. I also am in Wisconsin. Trust me, enough older gentlemen compliment you and enough young ladies say, "I like your hat!" and you won't worry any more.

I have gotten a negative comment from exactly one person, and I started wearing hats 25 years ago. She learned to shut it when she saw that I didn't care about her opinion.

Stand tall and walk proud, brother.

Tom

I second your thoughts. I have had more than one negative comment, well more naive I guess, but I normally shut them up quickly.

The compliments you will get will make more of an impact on your confidence than the negative comments or the looks you get. And once you start wearing hats, you tend to notice more people also wearing real hats (as opposed to ball caps). When I started wearing them I was in the local Walmart (or bowels of hell as I prefer to call it) and someone wearing a modern wool JC Penney fedora asked me about my 1942 Stetson. We ended up talking for a while about hats, where to get them, about this forum etc. Who knows, maybe I converted him to vintage lids. The point is, you will get a kick out of it!

 

[Zombie_61]

...I was actually thinking earlier today how my hat has become a bit of a symbol of personal freedom for me. How it represents how I no longer care what others think (or more accurately what I think others may think) about me or basically living in a state of fear or anxiety. Maybe that sounds a bit over-the-top but I think when I allow myself the courage - hell, the right - to wear whatever I want when I want, I kinda feel like I've taken some of my own power back. It reminds me of the times when I was younger, before the world beat me up a bit, and I felt I had the world by the brass big ones, you know?

I guess I feel for the first time in a long time like I'm able to rediscover the man I once was (or felt I was) and take that freedom to move forward again. After feeling like I was stagnant for so long, losing focus, gaining weight, you name it, I feel that the self-discipline it takes for me to put on that hat regardless of my inner-conflict and silly concerns has actually helped me to regain my focus and move forward with a more positive energy; kinda like I'm a better man for it. A freer man for it.

So yeah, this hat I put on my head is getting easier and easier each day because it's feeling lighter and lighter; I'm feeling freer. I never realized I had such inner nonsense until this whole "now I gotta wear a wide-brim hat" stuff happened to me, but I'm learning a lot about myself in the process and I really thank all of you for sharing your thoughts with me. Sorry for waxing in deep thought a little there, but I guess some of the comments hit a nerve...

It's interesting, and a little funny, how something as simple as a hat can do that for you. If someone had told me seven years ago that I'd soon become a dedicated hat-wearer, I would have advised them to have their medications checked or to cut back on their drinking. But now that I rarely leave the house without one, I sometimes wonder why I waited so long. lol

 

[Yesteryear]

It's good to hear that your hat-wearing confidence is building! If people think the fedora isn't a cool hat we will just prove them wrong by showing how great the hat can look!

I am pretty new to classic hat wearing myself. I bought my first classic hat just last year, a 1920s style straw boater. Prior to that I only wore flatcaps, which are common enough these days that they don't attract much attention. I really liked the boater hat though and wanted to have one myself.

At first I would leave the hat in my car since I didn't have the courage to wear it out in public. Eventually I mustered up the strength to keep it on my head and go in the store. I felt like an idiot for the first couple moments, but the positive reactions it got slowly eroded that feeling and replaced it with confidence. Eventually it reached the point where I put the hat on and don't give it a second thought.

When the winter of 2013 rolled around I bought my first fedora, a brown Country Gentleman 'Wilton' (the one I am wearing in my Avitar image). That hat was well received too, though the 'Indiana Jones' comments can be annoying.

 

[Rick Blaine]

If some puke is giving you a hard time it's because he wants to wear a fedora but hasn't got the stones and is projecting his insecurities upon you. His problem not yours.
Life is too short.

 

[Greyryder]

If some puke is giving you a hard time it's because he wants to wear a fedora but hasn't got the stones and is projecting his insecurities upon you. His problem not yours.
Life is too short.

This reminds me of a story one of the other people on this board told once. He had a rather intimidating individual walk up, shake his hand, and tell him he wished he had the nerve to dress that nice. I think that's buried somewhere in the reactions to your hat wearing thread.

 

[vintage68]

This reminds me of a story one of the other people on this board told once. He had a rather intimidating individual walk up, shake his hand, and tell him he wished he had the nerve to dress that nice. I think that's buried somewhere in the reactions to your hat wearing thread.

I think it's just basic human biology not to want to separate yourself out from the pack/tribe/etc. In ancient times being ostracized could mean getting killed. Same biology, even if it's the 21st century. Overcoming our primal instincts is not easy.