Beanie Bohemia – A History of Wooly Hats.

One of the compensations of winter is donning a nice, cosy wooly hat. There’s nothing like the snug feeling of those knitted sheep fibres embracing your cranium. But for me and many others, these items are more than just a way to keep warm. Woolen headgear has played a role in subculture for many years. It’s time to celebrate beanie bohemia.

I remember when I first began to wear a wool hat inside as well as outside; I was seventeen and playing drums in a band. My image was starting to become important to me. At family gatherings some elderly relative asked me: “Thomas, why are you wearing that wooly hat? Are you ill?” I snorted at the question. I could have said “Actually, I’m referencing Mike Nesmith in The Monkees, as well as various thrash punk bands – it’s a style thing, ok?!” but I merely grunted “”cos I want to”.

Wool hats were all around me, on the heads of off-duty psychobillies, indie kids and punks, usually in black. We got from the Army Surplus Stores and called them ‘Bob hats’ for some reason, although who Bob was remained a mystery.

Some people used to roll them so tightly that they resembled a carbonised Danish pastry of the back of them head. I thought this looked stupid, and used to pull mine down to just above the eyes.

At that time a coarse knitted wool hat was reminiscent of dockers, builders and anyone out on a picket line in winter. Like the donkey jacket, it was a way to express solidarity with the working-class. The early look of Dexy’s Midnight Runners was based on New York longshoremen.

But there were unplanned associations too. I remember walking into a grocers’ shop with my black hat on in on the late eighties and being called a terrorist. At that time the IRA was still engaged in it’s bombing campaign in mainland Britain and newspapers regularly featured the faces of IRA members or suspects on their front pages. They always seemed to be in black wool hats.

Seattle’s chilly climate created the grunge look in the early 90’s, with padded shirts and often woolen hats, which were now known as beanies. Rock acts now had their branded beanies, which were welded to the heads of their fans. It became common to see gangs of drunken eighteen year-olds at music festivals, sweating and lobsterised in the mid-day sun, still refusing to take off their black wool headgear.

One thing that can’t be left out here is the influence of knitted rasta hats. From Bob Marley and Peter Tosh to the extreme of Don Letts’s giant hat in recent years, this version of the wool hat is basically a bag to store your dreads in.

Gradually, this influenced the mainstream, who began to see that there was something kinda cool about a bit of excess baggage on the back of the head, even if you didn’t have anything to put in there.

This was probably the origin of the baggy beanie, an extra long version where the excess was left to hang at the back of the head like a flap. This looked ok unless the wearer happened to have a small head, in which case the flap looked ludicrously long – like Wee Willie Winkie’s night cap.

Unfortunately the baggy beanie quickly became commodified; available in grey from Top Man, worn by bodybuilders in espidrilles; and referencing nothing, except maybe an elephant’s piss-flap.

Beanies in their various lengths have also become the baldies’ savior. Outside the workplace, they are the 21st century version of a combover. The Edge, guitarist of ageing rockers U2, having tried bandanas and stetsons, has run out of options and has been trapped in a beanie since about 1990.

More recently, hipsterism has rehabilitated the bobble hat. During my youth I was phobic about bobbles, as I was about buttons and peas. A bobble hat was the symbol of a trainspotter, rambler or anyone untroubled by the vagaries of fashion. But twenty-first century style will suck anything into it’s orbit. Now bobbles are de rigeur and increasing in size. Even I have softened my stance; the hat I am currently wearing has a modest bobble.

This winter and indeed next summer, wear your hat with pride – you are in a fine tradition. And give thanks to the sheep that made it all possible.

Badly Drawn Boy, king of the tea cosy

Bruce rocking a lovely dollop of wool

Don Letts keeping it all under his hat