Consider all the tiny city/states that Europe was once comprised of...a vast array of tiny nations, with distinct cultures and myriad variations of language. There's something incredible in the fact that despite current boundaries and governments, places like Flanders, Alsace, Walonia, the Basque country and Tyrol still exist..sort of. I'm glad of it, because I can relate to whatever it is that makes people continue to preserve a heritage that the rest of the world tries hard to erase. Maybe that's what draws me to this hat:
Recently purchased from Orvis, made in Germany, it's a style of hat native to the Alps, popular in
Tyrol. Tyrol is cool, being kind of Italian, kind of Austrian, and kind of neither. They drink beer, but they also drink Italian style red wine. They eat
Speck, which is like prosciutto, only smoked, and
Bresaola, beef seasoned with salt, bay leaf and juniper berries, then air-cured...both delicious if you can find them. They even manage to preserve a particularly Tyrolean language known as
Ladino, an amazing feat in modern times. And they wear these hats, which are just plain cool, if you're so inclined to attempt to pull it off. I dig it, and I'm going to go ahead and use my Northern Italian heritage as an excuse to wear what a friend dubbed my "Pinocchio hat".
The final touch is achieved with this vintage Austrian hat pin, the generous gift of none other than Charlie Davidson of the Andover Shop. Back in the early sixties, when the
Harvard Square Oktoberfest actually saw men in liederhosen dining on knock wurst and sauerkraut and girls dressed as serving wenches serving
Wurzburger and
Paulaner in lidded steins, he used to sell these. If you need further convincing to purchase one of these hats, Charlie has consigned his entire collection of vintage hat pins with An Affordable Wardrobe , soon to be available in the shop. How can you resist?
If you think it will be difficult to actually go out and about in the USA wearing such a thing, not being an old Alpine gent with a formidable moustache, I completely understand. But consider how well it works with a Brooks Brothers shirts and repp tie from long gone men's clothiers Judd of Swampscott, Massachusetts, both quintessentially American, a Scottish Shetland sweater, and an English Barbour jacket, punctuated with an Italian Tri-Color enamel pin. If we consider the Chinese provenance of my socks and belt, then I've successfully spanned the globe with this one.
