A man has to think ahead about his clothes. It's mid-July, so the end of straw hat season is but two months away. Time, thinks I, to get an autumnal hat into the queue. And it's a good thing that I did, since the lead time at my hatmaker, VS Custom Crafted Hats, has deservedly extended from four weeks to ten since last year. At that rate another few months will find him booked solid until his retirement.
The hat in question is called a cavalier, a lightweight felt that Apparel Arts considered suitable for town and semi-sports wear when there was such a magazine. Art, the hatmaking proprietor of VS, apparently hasn't crafted one before so it'll be interesting to see his interpretation. Mine will be brown, and made from the same lightweight beaver felt as the porkpie he made for me at this time a year ago. And since a man's hat shouldn't relate too closely to the rest of the clothes he's wearing in order to preserve that difficult to achieve "I didn't try too hard" look, I should probably wear it when I'm wearing oxblood or black shoes. But I do like a bit of a match and more likely it'll come out when I'm wearing brown.
It'll be my cavalier approach to fall.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Cavalier Approach to Fall
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6 comments:
xnNot much of a hat-wearer myself, Will, but you found some great illustrations to illustrate your point.
My grandfather who wore a suit and tie every day of his life - even in retirement, wore hats and looked good in them. He was from the old school and he knew just how to angle it and look dapper. One doesn't see too much of that anymore unfortunately.
Will, in the second photo the hat is shaped sort of what I think a Lord's hat looks like. Is that the case? I understand the Lord's to be sort of a more casual Homberg.
This Cavalier is a particularly good looking all around hat.
I have said for years men just don't wear hats like they should. I have spen many a moment pondering the VS Custom Hats site, lusting after his limited addition "Tucker." Some day I will have the money needed to buy it (or one like it) from him.
Thanks for the post on hats again Will.
The lord's hat is a stiff hat, a homburg with a pinched crown and an unbound brim. The cavalier is lighter weight and much less structured.
The second illustration does look a bit like one, but it's labelled in the original as a cavalier. There's an illustration from Esquire 1938 that's in Flusser's last book depicting two men walking in front of the Plaza hotel. One is wearing a lord's and one a cavalier. The difference between them is more apparent but unfortunately I don't have that illustration on this computer.
The Cavalier depicted is virtually identical, except that it might have a slightly wider brim, to a Herbert Johnson hat which I purchased at Brooks Bothers in New York in the mid-sixties. That was during my pseudo-Toff stage when I often wore a hat despite my youth. I thought the model is called a Trilby. I still have the hat
There isn't all that much difference from one hat style to another in many cases however the trilby has a much narrower brim than the cavalier.
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