I wore my straw panama to work today.
This is not an activity I expected would raise too many eyebrows. But it really did.
My job is at one of those trendy IT places. They don't have a fireman's pole or table-football or anything but they do a casual dress policy and everyone goes to work in all sorts of clothes. Different fabrics, colours, jeans, shorts, skirts, suits, t-shirts are all perfectly acceptable. Admittedly if someone pitched up in a skin-tight, pink, rubber body-suit and nipple-clamps they might get sent home to change but it's a pretty liberal place on the whole.
So why are hats any different?
The minute I walked in I notice eyebrows raise, small smirks start to form and sarcastic comments bubble up. This in a place where I am sometimes amazed that some of the occupants can walk with their heads up with that much metal-work implanted in their faces.
It's not as if there aren't other hat-fanciers there too but when the subject is raised (infrequently) we start speaking in hushed tones and the suggestion that one or other of us will wear part of our respective headgear collections sounds like some kind of dare or juvenile boast.
There's also the journey to and from the office. When I see someone wearing a hat for the most part I think;"There's a person with a hat on" and that's about it. Obviously if it's a fisherman's cap with beanie-babies stitched on all over it then it might lead to further speculation about their sanity and there, I think, is the point.
Even now when hat wearing is out of fashion and we are long past the days where your headgear formed part of the uniform that declared your class and to some extent your livelihood, a hat still seems to be something that clearly defines who we are to everyone else. If I wear a straw panama I get asked if I am going to the beach today, I wear a leather cowboy hat and a passing builder starts whistling the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark. See someone in a trilby and you can't help but wonder if they'll try to sell you black-market nylons from under their coat.
Hats, even now, instil their archetypes on their wearers. Powerful things, hats.
Tomorrow I'll stick with the pink rubber bodysuit.
