Full to the brim this fall


This season smallish, modest trilbies and fedoras will suffer an inferiority complex as wider hats will be donned by men, especially those who have a flare for the dramatic.

Dsquared²'s menswear collection featured on the runway deep covering brimmed chapeaux with bowlish crowns.

Style.com reports they are Borsalinos. Which makes them the official supplier of the trend as Junya Watanabe also featured bigger brimmed fare by Borsalino in the form of bowlers (also called derby or coke - and, yes, they can have big brims) and Homburgs (Germanic upturned brims).

In both runway shows, the hats seem peaky. That is they are slightly misshapen as if by rain and snow, lending the hats a recession-era ruggedness. If not, they should be.

Some have called the whole trend towards bolder head cover the "Amish hat trend," but more often than not, they will be in fact be flamenco/Cordobes, gaucho hats, or any number of larger hats.

While shorter men, may need to be careful how generous a brim they dare to wear (it can hide your face from taller men and women), overall most men could do with an increase in size.

The recent love of teeny-brimmed porkpies and trilbies have lead to extremes in minuteness, verging on the male version of fascinators, the hat Catherine of Cambridge has popularized.

The hat that might best cap off the mood for headgear of greater substance would be unblocked or open crown hats with deep, unshaped bowls (the top image is the unblocked Nostalgia hat by Stetson).

Specialized hat sellers, in Vancouver one would do well with Edie Hats, are able to shape crowns to best suit your face, though one should pick the brim size carefully. While they can be snapped down or up by staff, making the brim smaller is not possible.

This blogger plans to leave his unblocked hat as is and let the elements and habit determine the topper's eventual shape.

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