The Baseball Cap

            Oh, loyal subjects of the hebephrenic hatter, today I went for a drive with the wind in my hat, the windows down, and the music blaring. Lo and behold, I’ve come to realize it’s spring.  Yes, that’s right, the sun is out, and the birds are chirping.  Everywhere it’s green, and that frost is slowly melting.  However, the advent of the sun comes with its drawbacks, and, with the great star in the sky in my eyes, I nearly drove, nose first, into a pond.  “Oh, cruel fate,” I lamented, “why hast thou given me a hat that does not cover mine eyes?  Why hast thou cursed me to suffer the rays of the sun?”  That’s when I realized that society has moved beyond the hats of the past, and I have in my possession one of the greatest hat innovations of modern times.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am featuring the baseball cap.

            According to this place, it took years for professional baseball leagues to settle on a hegemonic style of headwear.  Interestingly enough, the first baseball team (i.e. the knickerbockers) wore straw hats, and from the 1840’s through 70’s baseball teams wore a variety of different hat styles.  Then in the 1860’s, the Brooklyn Excelsior wore the precursor to today’s baseball cap.  Yes, it was rounded and had a bill to keep the sun out of their eyes.  Furthermore, by the 1940’s we had the technology to create the baseball cap of today, and, when the mainstream public caught on, the hat made its way into one of America’s most prominent hats.  That’s right!  If baseball is America’s pastime, the baseball cap is America’s choice of hat, because, according to these people, the baseball cap is an American icon.

Photo Courtesy of americanaclassicvintage.com

            So if you haven’t incorporated the baseball cap as the de rigueur of your headwear fashion you might be a terrorist, because the cap is the turning point of American bourgeois and working class fashion.  I guess what I’m saying is: go out and get a baseball cap today or wreck your car in a ditch.  Well, fellow headwear enthusiasts, that’s it for today’s installment of the hebephrenic hatter.  Goodbye and good luck!

The Mortarboard

            It’s that time of year ladies and gentlemen; college students are being thrust out into the real world, high schools kids are being thrown into the ideologies of the academic world, and parents everywhere are proud.  Can you feel it?  Graduation is in the air, and for many it is a time for change.  For others it means having to find that elusive job thing you keep hearing about.  Can you see it?  Amassed groups of young educated people everywhere will be donning their ceremonial caps and gowns and receiving certification for their years of intellectual work.  This is why, ladies and gentlemen, we are featuring the mortarboard as the hat of accomplishment on the hebephrenic hatter.

            According to this place, the cap and gown tradition originated in the 12^th century.  Our medieval predecessors and accomplices in knowledge wore the garb as a religious practice.  They needed to signify their status of, or comparability to, clerics, and hoods were adopted later for warmth.  These guys claim that in the fifteenth century scholars adopted the cap (i.e. mortarboard), as many headwear innovations were conceived, to protect their heads, and the aristocracy are reported to have decorated their hats with strands of pearls and the like.  This, as you have guessed, could very well have been the first tassels used in graduation ceremonies.

Photo courtesy of math.byu.edu.

            So, depending on the school you go to or degree obtained, when you move your tassel form right to left or left to right remember you are a part of a proud tradition of scholars dating back to medieval times.  It is also important to keep in mind that, while you may be leaving school, you education will last a lifetime.  That’s it for today’s installment of the hebephrenic hatter, but stay tuned for more of your favorite hats.