Fashion is dead: Covid dunnit, but can we take solace in the hat?

Fashion is dead

Fashion choices don’t require much imagination today. Nor do they demand much of a wardrobe. Here’s how most approach that daily decision. Pants. Grey or orange trackpants? Tops. Blue fleece or the grey woollen jumper with a hole in the elbow? Shoes. Runners, Uggs or keep the bed socks on?

Okay, sometimes we make an effort. We’ll don the rainbow leggings or pull on a pair of boots and wonder why a half inch heel feels ambitious. We might wear a shirt under a jumper and curse the idea of ironing it later. Ironing? Where is that iron?

As fashion designers hole up in Mediterranean villas, our wardrobes have been stripped back to fit a zoom screen.

We want – no, need – clothing that’s kind to the waistline; shoes are as sloppy as we feel and we both despair and delight in the idea of never wearing a label again.

We have only two real choices – the mask and the hat. In fashion’s cruellest twist, there are now online parades of mask fashion.

In Korea, the masks come in silks with glitter finishes and are designed for viruses and, later, city pollution (that’s something to look forward to).

In Melbourne, there are maker masks that prove your handiwork; there are message masks that do the talking for you; sporty masks, mission masks (they support causes), ironic masks and – like bread – some masks are released at 7am every morning.

There are, of course, disposable masks but that’s like asking for a plastic bag in a shop.

For those who don’t have to mask up, there is the hat and that’s my fashion choice after I’ve chosen the orange trackpants and deep blue fleece with three-button front.

And it may seem a little 1919, but, putting on my Anna Wintour hat, it’s where fashion is heading.

Hats have always said a lot about the person. If you spot a politician in a cap, you can bet it’s the weekend, there’s a sports final on and they need to buff their everyman image. In politics, the cap is performative folksiness. When you see a politician in an Akubra, it’s a drought, they’ve got a photo-op with farmers and there’s a good chance they’ve shown up to the cattle yard in a grazier’s Akubra.

Hats help shape your identity, they state your intentions and the best make a comment on the world. But you have to inhabit a hat.

You can’t walk around feeling like you’re balancing a load of firewood on your head. If you wear an Akubra, you have to feel as if you could wrangle a sheep onto a Ute. If you’re wearing the oversized straw hat, you have to make like you’re on a yacht off the coast of France.

My choice of hat happens like this. The wool cap signals sporty intentions on a cool day. The narrow brim felt hat takes me to the cafe but, since a friend described it as a bit Leonard Cohen, it marks a moody presence in a coffee queue. The crushed semi-cowboy straw is for mucking out. The deep-brim straw hat with chin tie is the serious gardening hat (I could get a Jim’s Mowing franchise with that one).

A deeper dig in the hat stand reveals a boater that needs to be close to a riverbank, cloches that need a cuter head and a couple of beanies that are worn during blizzards but don’t look good on anyone over the age of four years.

Funnily enough, I’ve yet to find a hat that looks good with trackies – especially orange ones – but that may say more about the pants than the hat.

[e-mail]