How the Baseball Cap Went From Athletic Gear to Fashion Statemen
The “Philadelphia style,” with a sturdier brim, debuted in 1908, and was quickly

embraced by major-league teams. Designers continued to tinker, as crowns grew higher and

materials became sturdier. The advent of television—the first major-league game was

telecast on August 26, 1939—brought a whole new audience to the sport and precipitated a

rush of uniform redesigns and team relocations. By 1945 every team was wearing its own

branded hat, and the accessory soon threaded its way into the hearts of children,

especially those who played Little League and would take the look into adulthood.
In the 1960s and ’70s, agricultural companies began embellishing their foam-front

hats with company logos and cheap, plastic adjustable straps. Mesh backing also made the

hats more breathable for workers, and long-haul drivers embraced these new accessories,

inaugurating the phenomenon of the trucker hat.
In the 1980s, New Era, the company that had supplied Major League Baseball for

decades, started selling authentic team-branded hats to fans. Soon they were de rigueur.

Tom Selleck’s character in “Magnum, P.I.,” set in Hawaii, wore a Tigers hat. You could

see baseball hats on the cover of French Elle, in rap videos and atop the head of Princess

Diana, whose occasional appearance in jeans and a baseball cap helped nurture her reputation as the “people’s

princess”: It signaled approachability, even for a royal. And it worked for other

luminaries as well. Steve Reich, a composer whose work has been played in some of the

grandest halls in the world, and Paul Simon, one of the most successful pop musicians of

the last 50 years, are both inseparable from rumpled, unbranded caps, even when they’re

wearing black tie. No stuffy art-world or rock-star glamour here, the hats say. These are

millionaires you could have a beer with.
The Advantages of a Snapback Cap
Adjustable Hats Fit Better
There is one problem that many people have with fitted caps, and this is that they do

not always fit very well. They are either a bit too loose, or a bit too tight, and the

next size up or down is way too loose or tight. The caps that come in small, medium and

large are just not always right for everyone. With a snapback, you can adjust it so that

it is a perfect fit, which is going to make your hat really comfortable too. Adjustable

hats are easy to adjust, and can be fitted to many different sizes quickly and easily.

There are no buckles to jab into the back of your head or straps hanging out, and no

Velcro for your hair to get caught up in.
Show Your Team Spirit
When people go to sporting events, they often wear clothing with the logos of their

favorite teams to show their support. One great way to show your team spirit is to wear a

snapback tap with the team logo on it. It is a lot less expensive to get a hat than other

sports-related clothing items, such as jackets and shirts, and unlike these pieces of

clothing, you can wear the same hat every day if you want, and no one is going to notice

or even care. If you were to wear a team shirt every day, people will notice, so a hat is

a much better way to be able to show your team spirit whenever you feel like it.
Great Gifts
If you are looking for a fun gift that will not cost a lot of money, an adjustable

baseball cap is the ideal gift. If you have a sports enthusiast in your family, they will

love getting a hat that has their favorite team's logo on it. The best part is, with a

snapback cap, you never

have to worry about whether or not you have gotten the right size, because it can be

adjusted to just about any size.
Trucker Caps Let Israelis Stand Out, but Not Too Much
TEL AVIV—A craze for trucker

cap in Israel this year is allowing people here to finally express themselves

sartorially—and at the same time look just like everyone else.
Israelis have an easy-going fashion sense that doesn’t much stick out in a crowd.

Thanks to the lasting influence of the state’s founding socialist ethos, many avoid bold

fashion statements. Among the nonreligious, plain T-shirts with jeans, or shorts when it’

s hot, are the most common uniform. High-powered CEOs shun suits. The fanciest restaurants

rarely have a dress code.
ut the mania for the caps—preferably with an animal on the front—is giving Israelis

an opportunity to express themselves, up to a point.
Made by San Francisco-based hat maker Goorin Bros., the hats come embossed with

different animals, often accompanied by a play on words. People choose which one they wear

to offer a hint as to their personality.
“It’s a hat with a presence,” said Amit Deutsch, a 36-year-old Tel Avivi, who

sported a cap with a black panther, and had bought five of them at 150 Israeli shekels, or

$46. “It’s become a type of icon.”
Hodaya Elkayam, 23, who purchased a blue suede cap with an eagle and the word

“America” in a Tel Aviv market on a sunny Friday afternoon, said the hats “have got

style, they’re pretty and comfortable. So they’re good for all occasions.”
RESERVED FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT BLENDING IN
In HBO Max's abortion road trip movie Unpregnant, Simonelli introduces Barbie

Ferreira's character, Bailey — who's all of the above — wearing a purple angora

Kangol bucket hat as she

pops up over a bathroom stall divider. The hat's unexpected color and plushness, which

match and clash with her shaggy green stuffed animal backpack, also help convey

Bailey's innate but unintentional style. "I don't know if she's

registered the cool factor that she has," adds Simonelli. Plus, her face-framing

headwear was actually inspired by Ferreira serving her own outfit inspo in a textured

white variation on Instagram.
A nostalgic look back at the bucket hat icons of decades past really does run the

gamut of individual style and creative talents. Simonelli references late-'80s hip-hop

legends Run-DMC, the white cotton canvas classic of author and founder of the '70s

gonzo journalism movement Hunter S. Thompson, and, of course, all the floppy and floral-

accented toppers worn by Mayim Bialik in Blossom, which ran from 1990 to 1995.
"Then you think of some of the late-'80s and '90s R&B singers, like

Brandy, SWV, Missy Elliot, and Janet Jackson," says Smith, who also name-checked

Blossom. "That cool sense of style that's laid-back and chill." During the

early-2000s return of carefree teen pop, a trifecta of Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, and

Britney Spears in the relaxed look, also come to mind.
All About Knitted Hats
Who knows when the first person decided to put something over their head to keep it

warm, but knitters know that

knitted hat is some of the most fun and easy things to knit.
When they’re worked in the round there is little in the way of shaping, except when

you get to the crown.
Most hats are worked from the bottom up, with stitches cast-on and worked in a snug

stitch pattern such as ribbing, or in stockinette for a rolled bring hat, using a smaller

size needle than is used for the head portion of the hat.
In many hat patterns, the hat is worked straight for the desired length of the crown,

then nearly all of the stitches are evenly decreased over the course of just a few rounds.
The yarn is cut, the tail threaded through the remaining stitches, pulled tight, and

fastened off to the inside of the hat.
The hat can be topped with a pom pom, i-cord, tassel, or whatever embellishment

strikes your fancy.
A great book for learning to make hats is Ann Budd’s Handy Book of Patterns, from

which some of the material on this page is excerpted. There are chapters on basic hats as

well as the type of hats called “tams.”
There are several types of hats, but the most popular knitted hats are beanie-type

caps, tams (sometimes called “berets”), slouch hats, earflap hats, and tuques.
Beanies: These hats can be super simple or dressed up with a lace or cable patterns.

In cooler climates, they’re wonderful gifts for knitters to make.
Tams/Berets: There are so many different stitch patterns to use in this style. Tams

and berets can be plain stockinette or intricate Fair Isle. This style of hat is really

flattering on just about every face shape, too.
Earflap Hats: These hats are popular in cold climates. They’re great for keeping ears

warm and they’re fun to knit. The knitters of Peru specialize in these hats, as shown in

the photo at right.
THE HISTORY OF THE STRAW HAT
Reaching for a straw hat to complete our seaside look—or frankly, any summer outfit—

is as instinctive to us as say, oh I don’t know, breathing. Next to sunglasses, it’s one

of the most obvious accessories to use as protection against the sun’s harmful UV rays,

but its origins are less than clear. When an item is as ubiquitous as that of a

straw hat, it’s virtually

impossible to determine its original maker or even pinpoint the first documentation of its

existence. (Fun fact about hats: Historians believe that some type of head-covering piece

—as protection against inclement weather—was the first article of clothing ever worn by

humans.)
Straw hats—distinguished by their woven makeup of different types of straw or fibers

similar in texture and strength, like braided hemp, raffia, and jute—are believed to have

been worn in Europe and Asia as early as the 15th century (after the Middle Ages). In most

countries in Asia, including Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, rice paddy

workers topped their heads with conical-shaped hats to shield themselves from the sun and

the rain, though legend in Vietnam has it that the hat, or nón lá in Vietnamese,

originated from when a goddess descended from the sky wearing an enormous hat made of four

large leaves held together by bamboo sticks, which protected the people from a torrential

downpour.
In the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, the most famous surviving example of an

illuminated French Gothic manuscript created from 1412 to 1416, short-brim straw hats are

shown mostly worn by men. Though by the 1700s, French women wore straw bonnets and in the

1800s, European paintings all depict women posing for portraits in ribbon-adorned floppy

straw hats and floral-strewn ones with an upturned brim. Vincent Van Gogh even

immortalized his straw hat in a self-portrait in 1887. The first cowboy hat—made of

straw, might we add—was invented by John B. Stetson in 1865, and the silhouette basically

remains unchanged to this day.
By the late 1800s and early 1900s, straw hats were embraced by everyone. But it wasn’

t until President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1906 visit to the Panama Canal—when he was

photographed at the construction site in his pale suit and Panama hat—that the accessory

catapulted to fame. Light in weight, the summertime staple exuded equal parts casual and

polish; by 1944, it became Ecuador’s number-one export.
Conclusion
As an experienced manufacturer and supplier, in

addition to the above hats, we also provide various other types of

caps and hats, such as



children's baseball cap,knitted hats, straw hats and so on.