For the past year and a half, I have developed a passion for the fedora. It’s not that I have never worn hats. I purchased my first wool fedora decades ago at Hats in the Belfrey in Old Town Alexandria, but I never wore it much, partly because it sits a tad too tight. I have also owned for many years an outback hat—great for walking the dogs in the winter months or in the rain. But I have long wanted to acquire a fine fedora.
And then we visited Old Quebec City in 2019 for Christmas. While walking around the city, we came across a little shop named BiBi & Cie, Chapelier. When the shop owner realized that I was a serious buyer, she introduced me to the Grand Beaver by Magill. It’s a single dent fedora, with a 2 1/2″ brim and underwelt edge. The color is midnight blue. Depending on the light, it looks either black or dark navy. It has, I think, a more formal, or at least different, look than my other hats—perhaps because of the gentle curve of the brim. I’m not sure. Compare it to the other hats and you’ll see what I mean. You can’t tell from the photos, but the brim is snapped up in the back, as is the case with all the hats I wear.
A few month after Quebec I purchased my second hat—the Stratoliner by Stetson. The Stratoliner has a special place in Stetson history. It has a teardrop crown, 2 1/2″ brim with bound edge, and a narrow hatband. And of course it’s blue. Blue has long been my favorite color. And Christine says that the blue hat brings out the blue of my bedroom eyes. (Let the women swoon!) The Stratoliner has been my go-to lid since I got it. It has a casual, relaxed look, and the felt is very soft and flexible.
Everyone says that hats made decades ago were of higher quality than the hats made today. I then heard about vintage hats being sold on ebay. I found two fedoras that I really like. Both were originally sold by J.C. Penny under the label “Marathon.” Both have teardrop crowns, medium brims with bound edge, and a tight pinch at the tip. Gregory Peck wore this style in a couple of his movies, as did just about everyone in the 40s and 50s. The grey one with blue ribbon makes me think of a newspaper reporter. Some folks refer to it as the Whippet style after the famous Stetson hat.
Next up is what I think of as my Bogart hat—the Stetson Pinnacle in grey. It’s the lid I’ll be wearing tonight for the showing of Casablanca at the Grandin Theatre. Single dent crown, 2 5/8″ dimensional brim (which means that the brim is narrower on the sides than the front and back), raw edge, and a wide black hatband. In the second photo I’m trying to give my best gangster look I can muster. Oh well … I’ll continue to work on it before I hit the theatre tonight. Here’s looking at you, kid.
In preparation for watching Casablanca, I added a tighter pinch in the front to better approximate Bogart’s fedora. I think I’ll keep this pinch and steam it in at a future date … or not. Something to be said about both looks. While my Pinnacle has a single dent crown, Bogart’s fedora has a triangle crown (a modification of the teardrop), which gives it a blockier look.
Finally we come to my latest acquisition, which arrived in the mail a few days ago. This is my first custom-made, or bespoke, fedora. I ordered it from Bellissimo Hats. It has a teardrop crown and 2 1/2″ raw edge brim. The color is called silverbelly. My gosh it’s a beauty. The photographs do not capture the subtle richness of its cream-white color. The wine hatband really sets it off. I can’t wait for Fall to arrive so I can wear it around Roanoke!
I suppose I now have enough hats (NOT!). I confess I have an Akubra Stylemaster in acorn on backorder. Everyone says that for the money it’s one of the best fedoras around. Clearly I don’t need it; but I have, apparently, become a collector. I still want to add a 2 1/4″ and a 2 3/4″ brim lid to my collection. My wife says she is going to send me to Mount Athos for addiction treatment. If you think she’s being extreme … well … I haven’t yet confessed all my sins. I’ll show them off next Fall.
I mentioned above that I always wear the brim down in the front and up in the back—I suppose because that’s the way actors wore them in the many old movies I have watched over the years. Today, though, many like to wear the brim up all around. It just ain’t me. What do you think?
So which of the above fedoras do you like best?
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
Oh my, they’re all wonderful – and the new Bellissimo is my favorite. I’m old enough to have had a father who wore hats when he went out anywhere – “going out” meant stepping outside the front door for anything but doing yard work. I still have his last hat, a conservative brown Trilby my husband wears from time to time. I like to wear hats, too, Fr A, and as a light-skinned 98% northern/western European type who has had a significant bout with a superficial melanoma, it’s a requirement for me now whenever I am outdoors.
I don’t believe a woman keeping her head covered during worship is necessary, because the context and meaning of that practice has changed. Once I understood how it was viewed in New Testament times and why St Paul advised it, I got past the whole “symbol of submission” thing. (How many times I have seen young women, esp of Russian heritage, come to Liturgy with a scarf around their heads and wearing dresses with exceedingly short hemlines… another “adventure in missing the point”…) I do like the angle my parish priest puts on it: only the priests and women are allowed to cover their heads in Church. One could view it as a signal that women, with Eve having been created last, are the crown of creation, and as a nod to the Theotokos, the crown of humanity. It’s not a rule in my parish, but there’s something in me that actually connects with having my head covered when participating in a Sacrament, so I am one of the few women in my age group who does that. However, I hate how I look with a scarf wrapped around my head and neck, so I usually wear a hat, either a simple pillbox or a quiet low-crowned straw or felt hat with a wider brim.
Dana
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Dana, here’s a 3″ brim fedora I bought for my wife a month or two ago. She loves it and will be wearing it tonight when we see Casablance. JJ Hats is now having a 20% off sale, which also applies to their clearance items!
https://www.jjhatcenter.com/collections/the-backroom/products/the-mesa-clearance
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Thanks for the link! Have a wonderful time at the movies – Casablanca is one of the all-time greats, just about perfect in every way.
Dana
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young Russian women in shorter skirts covering their heads may be imperfect piety but it is piety nonetheless. At first it surprised me, but over time it struck me as more “with the point” than the “what I would wear to dinner” presentation that most American women trend toward. But maybe I am wrong: the women I really enjoy seeing dressed for church are African Americans – decked out in true “Sunday best” with a matching hat. Just reeks of class – maybe not quite piety per se, but I love it.
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Greg, I’m not faulting their piety at all; I think what they do is actually kind of sweet, even if their mother makes them do it 🙂
It’s just that the point of St Paul’s advice was simply modesty associated with Christian worship as having nothing to do with the rituals of fertility religions;he didn’t want anybody to get any wrong ideas about Christian worship and therefore Christian faith. You may already know that, and that women with uncovered hair in that day were seen as sexually available, because of what people believed about how the hair functions with regard to reproductive biology. We don’t think that way about biology any more, but the comparable instruction today would still have to do with appropriateness of dress for both males and females, especially as regards perhaps wearing some noticeable clothing or jewelry symbol having to do with another religion – not so much with what’s on a woman’s head.
I’m so with you on African American women dressed for church!
D.
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The wine hat band would be my pick! Love them all though.
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My pick too!
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Can I put in a plug for one of the few custom mens hatters left in the US – Paul’s Hat Works. They are, by coincidence on the block adjacent to the ROCOR Holy Virgin Cathedral in SF, which is a remarkable place for pilgrimage- beautiful iconography, a nice bookstore, and, perhaps most importantly, the incorrupt relics of St John Maximovitch, a powerful, powerful intercessor.
https://www.hatworksbypaul.com/
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Silverbelly with the wine band and bird leaf is quickly my pick.
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My favorite is the Stratoliner. I like thin/western style bands. And I’m a Stetson man myself, these days. But I do still wear a Borsalino from time to time. I have to say, though, that I only wear a fedora when I’m wearing a sport coat or suit jacket. That is the garment the form of hat was meant to accompany, and without that form below the neck, the fedora form atop the head just doesn’t seem right to me – on me, anyway. Likewise, I don’t think a man’s suit of clothes looks right without the hat. Complementarity is a thing. What God has joined together let no man put asunder.
How are you set up with straw hats/Panama hats? I had to discard my favorite a few years back, as it had become damaged by the elements and, I confess, by poor care and storage; and one of my children destroyed my backup over a year ago. I’m planning on heading into downtown Detroit soon and visiting my favorite shop to get a new Panama. I will be tempted to get a new fedora while I’m there, but I shall valiantly resist the temptation.
On the matter of covering one’s head or not… I don’t know about others, but I delight in such proprieties, and lament their disappearance from our culture. The other day I was out cycling and as I approached a church I frequently pass, this funeral comes barging out the front doors. I had no choice but to come to a halt, and I realized I couldn’t just stand there gawking at everyone: I removed my helmet until they’d all gone into the parking lot and I could go on my way. It felt silly, but at the same time like the right thing to do. We are symbolic creatures living in a symbolic cosmos, and we must not lose any way of signifying this.
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Jonathan, I love my Stratoliner. I disagree strongly with you regarding the connection between fedoras and suits. That connection must be broken if the fedora is to be saved from the baseball cap. The fedora should be seen as an everyday lid that may be worn under most conditions. I certainly agree, though, that coupling the right fedora with a suit is most excellent.
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So Jonathan, what are your favorite Stetsons?
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I like the Stetson Pinnacle.
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Last night I wore my Pinnacle to the showing of Casablanca. I added a tighter pinch in the front to better approximate Bogart’s fedora.
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I love it father!
1. I didn’t realise you were a big Casablanca fan. I am too! It’s one of my top three films (those being Casablanca, otto e mezzo, and fantasia 2000). Any chance of a blog post with theological reflection on the film? 🙂
2. I don’t know how to answer your question “Which looks best?” because you look fantastic in all of them! I have a subtle gut reaction towards the one with the feather however.
3. I’m a hat fan too, but I hesitate to invest deeply because all it takes is to be caught off guard by the weather for the money to be wasted. That, and I’m back to living the poor unemployed student/academic life, which doesn’t have the sort of cashflow required for maintaining expensive habits (with that said… I always have a bottle of laphroiag on hand XD mea maxima culpa, domine Iesus Christe, filii dei, miserere mei, peccatoris!). With that said, I do myself have quite a variety of hats on top of my bookshelf. I’m more a fan of flatcap varieties than trilbies and fedoras, but every now and then (pre-covid) I would show off hats in public like the ones you display in this post.
4. Thanks so much for a more “human” post father. It’s a blessing to see the smiling face behind all the theology and passionate energy for the gospel that you broadcast on this fantastic blog. I don’t know if it would really fit with the “theological theme” you’ve established for this blog over the past decade or so, but I for one would love to see more of these sorts of posts which give a glimpse of you as a person ❤
5. Honestly curious: do you find it "weird" at all to be taking "selfies" like this? I'm a millenial, but I've never really felt comfortable with the selfie culture of my generation (I only send selfies to my partner. No instagramming and facebooking for me!). I have a hunch it must be a sort of low key "brave new world" phenomenon for you to be posting selfies online for anyone to see XD
6. If you don't mind my asking, how have you managed to maintain financial stability at this stage of life? I ask because a) You've hopped between ecclesial affiliations multiple times and this must have had an impact on receiving financial support from your current and previous churches as a retired clergyman, b) you live in the states, which is notoriously backwards when it comes to secular social security (cf, various DBH essays on this topic), c) I'm unaware of you doing any paid work "on the side:" I get the impression that most of your "active" time is spent reading, praying, blogging, d) you're still a family man, married to Christine, and presumably you guys are a traditional couple where the material/financial support primarily falls on you? e) finally, your answer might give me some hope for my own future, because issues surrounding financial security are a daily existential crisis for me; I'm trying to be both an "in the trenches" missionary and the next DBH/Robert Jenson simultaneously, neither of which pays well and both of which together take up pretty much all of my time.
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I’m glad you enjoyed my fedora post. I wanted to share something more personal, if only because I’ve been struggling to find theological topics to write about. And I like the silverbelly fedora best, too.
And yes, you are now seeing my COVID hair. 😎
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7. Have you by any chance allowed your hair to grow wild during covid? I recall previous photos of you showing you with a much more “respectable” cut haha
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I think you look super suave in all of them. Long live the fedora!
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