Archive for year: 2013

Hats are often cited by men’s fashion magazines as the most important accessory in the male wardrobe, and for good reason. You can tell a lot about a guy by the type of hat he wears.

Priorities

If you look to the world of animation for guidance, most cartoon characters seem to place more value on their hat than their pants, often putting a lot of thought into a sharp-looking headpiece while skimping on their legwear and shoes. It’s not uncommon to see a barefooted ‘toon with cheap tights, underwear, short pants, or most curiously, no pants at all. This tells us all we need to know about hats. They are important. A fine hat carries many symbolic references to personality, taste, musical preferences, favored cities, professions, hygiene and even social status.

Social Status

If you’re not careful, a hat may stimulate battles for dominance among rival alpha males with allegiances to different teams, cities, causes or groups. When I was 17 I went to my girlfriend’s house for the first time wearing my latest purchase – a “Greenpeace” hat made from 100% organic hemp – a real political statement for a 17-year-old hippie boy. Upon entering the garage, where her father was busy at work repairing components to a carburetor, I was immediately accosted by a snarling old man. He yanked the hat from my head and proceeded to stomp his muddy boots all over it until it was utterly destroyed. I received his non-verbal message loud and clear, which may have been harder to obtain had I not been wearing a hat.

Fashion

For a singular fashion item, there’s a lot of thought that goes into a hat. In 2012, after many years donning the retro Seattle Mariners cap with the yellow trident, I made the decision to stop wearing baseball caps that demonstrated an allegiance to an area I no longer lived in, and a baseball team that regularly lost twice as many games as they won. “Surely I can make a grander statement, I thought.” So when I walked into Powell’s City of Books and saw they had a trucker-style Powell’s branded baseball cap I knew I’d met my match. You can imagine the joy I experienced when I received the Powell’s trucker hat as a birthday gift later that year.

Travel

Time passed and I grew to adore how this hat represented my chosen career path, my adopted city, and I liked that it represented a treasured Portland institutional icon and a respectable past-time activity: reading. When I went to Europe in 2012 I was sure to bring my hat to alleviate bedhead, but also to communicate to Europeans that I am not like other Americans. My hat said, “I am from Portland, Oregon and I am an educated American who likes to read books.” I have great photos wearing the hat in Amsterdam, Paris and even Bosnia. Yet it was upon my return trip to Paris that one day it was suddenly lost. Without explanation.

Personal Taste

My travel partner for weeks had lamented the fact that I was wearing a trucker-style hat as we toured fabulous landmarks in Amsterdam, and dined through the finest cafes of Paris. It was embarrassing to her and I’d often catch her leering hawkish eyes peering over the rim of her espresso cup as she viewed me in disgust. I tried to explain that my Powell’s cap wasn’t just any trucker hat, that it represented our beloved city, culture and the act of reading, but she was having none of it.

Hat History

I first learned of her disdain for such a fashion item on a day when I paid a visit to her home sporting a trucker hat with the hand-painted message “I Love Hot Wet Rio.” I didn’t know what it meant, she didn’t know what it meant, nobody knew what it meant – but it was a cool hat.

“What are you doing wearing that trashy hat?” she inquired.

Regrets

I should have caught the red flags when I made the mistake of wearing the “I Love Hot Wet Rio” hat to her house a second time, missing similarly worded verbal cues, for it was subsequently lost. She later admitted to accidentally throwing it away, but when I acquired a second “I Love Hot Wet Rio” hat and it was also lost under mysterious circumstances, I should have realized that something was not right in trucker-town.

 

Paris, France 

One day last spring my favored Powell’s hat went missing from our little hotel in the Rue Cler neighborhood of Paris, and I grew awfully suspicious of the afore mentioned person. I had just arrived two days earlier from Sarajevo, Bosnia where I had proudly worn the hat from end to end of the city, and I wore it back to Paris. I know that for a fact, because you cannot pack a hat. The sheer force of the other items in the suitcase would certainly crush it. I began my inquiry like Inspector Poirot.

“Did you hide my favorite Powell’s hat,” I asked?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said with a smirk and a sly knowing eye aimed towards my sister’s general direction. “I don’t think you came back from Bosnia with that hat,” she said. They both giggled and I nearly lost my s***. I immediately calmed myself down in a desperate attempt to appear reasonable.

“Come on, you have to tell me where that hat is,” I begged. “It’s my favorite hat.”

“You never brought it back from Bosnia,” she said, lacking any empathy whatsoever.  More giggles.

I recognized it was a losing battle and I was utterly destroyed inside. So the next day, while they were off sampling pastries at Ladurée, I set to task tearing the hotel room apart, heckling any snobby hotel staff I encountered. I waited in the dark shadows like a predator for housekeeping, but they never came. I spent the rest of the trip with messy windblown hair, relentlessly battered, beaded and tossed about by the rains of the British Isles.

Somber Homecoming

Upon returning to our fair Rose City my first item of business was to find a replacement cap. I started at the Powell’s on Hawthorne but my hat was out of stock.  I took the bus to the Powell’s downtown and they were also out of stock. An employee logged into the computerized merchandise system and discovered that one hat was available at the technical bookstore. I tore across the street and into the bookstore but the staff couldn’t find any record of a trucker hat in their system. “It must have been a glitch,” said the employee.

Social Media to the Rescue

I don’t remember how I got home that day, but I recall the defeated feeling in my heart when I plopped upon the couch. I remember that desperate moment when I clutched my iPhone and tweeted a last ditch agony-fueled effort to Powell’s Books Twitter account:

I then set about rebuilding my new life.

* * *

But wouldn’t you know it, 42 minutes later I received the following message:

To which I replied:

I can’t tell you what an amazing experience it is to have that kind of attention and care from a business. Powell’s was always an important place for the pre-21 year old version of myself who prowled the city looking for late night adventures. When I tried to make it in rock’n’roll during my early 20’s I went to Powell’s to buy books to learn about the music industry. When I got my first “real job” and had to learn what PR was, and quickly, I ran to Powell’s Books. When I decided to start my own business and needed some advice to get me started, I went to Powell’s Books. When I have an out of town visitor and I want to show them something really cool, I take them to Powell’s Books.

Powell’s is such a valued cultural institution in this town for all of the reasons above, but they are also staffed by super caring and thoughtful people too. I received the following message a couple weeks ago:

Powell’s staff sent me a hat, which arrived last week and I am wearing it at this very moment because of our office’s loose dress code. They have also provided quite the interesting case study in the power and value of social media.

Michael Phillips, Lion Tamer, wears many hats at AM:PM PR.