Why I So Infrequently Wear a Bowler Hat
Posted on January 27, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 56 Comments
Because I’m about 30 years too old to pull off the “adorable street urchin” look, that’s why.
Photo by my friend Doselle, who I suspect the bowler hat would have looked much better on. Bowler hat via my pal Brian, who in fact it did look better on. It takes a special sort of man to work a bowler hat, basically, and I am clearly not he.
It does take a special man. Little Alex was just such a man, and I am proud that he wore the hat so much better than you!
Trey – who is partial to a panama.
Oh c’mon Scalzi. You can work in any hat! Try a jester’s hat at the next con. Betcha you’ll rock the house.
Give it another 20 years and try it again.
Doselle!
You’re right. He would have looked awesome.
The bowler works for you.
I used to wear a fedora. My wife made me ditch it when I grew a beard.
I don’t wear mine because it fits too tight. I wanted a hat that didn’t blow off in the wind, and I got it by gum.
Don’t think street urchin, a bowler hat is a working man’s hat. It’s the old time answer to our current hard hat in origin, designed to offer some protection from falling branches while tending to the master’s stand of trees.
eviljwinter: really? my wife forbid me to wear mine the first time she saw it on me. Said I looked like a school shooter. I suspect it’s something about beard+younger+hat. hrmpf.
bowler hat guy AHHH. lol. My best friend is british and he can pull off a bowler hat rather well. then again i cannot make any hat look good. not even one of those giant foam cowboy hats.
Hunh. I get away with a fedora-style just fine with a goatee. Then again, I’m a redhead, and my wife doesn’t like me getting sunburned. My new ones are also too tight. Anyone know how to loosen leather hats?
John, I think you can probably pull off a bowler with the right attitude, but a fedora would probably work better.
I think you’re more a pork pie type.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_pie_hat
You went to the University of Chicago. You should wear a fedora.
Hunh. I always thought of pork pie hats as looking like bowlers. Shows what I know.
Because you don’t want to look like a figure in a Magritte painting?
Also, it make you look like an unsuccessful Ulster Unionist.
(Mind you, that’s the best kind of Ulster Unionist…)
Sure on the downside it makes your cheeks look a bit chipmunky, but hey on the upside it does cover your bald spot.
It does sort of bring out the Dickens-teaching-young-urchins-to-steal side of your personality.
Wow I totally read “pal Brian” as Brainpal. Oh man I need to go home.
Mark Terry, you cannot teach an urchin to steal. You can merely exploit their natural tendency to do so.
Goof. Straighten that thing, have a shave and put on a suit and tie. Then you’ll look awesome.
Think John Steed, or George Banks, or Jeeves. Classic.
I had a bowler derby long time ago. It got destroyed somewhere along the line; I’ve been thinking recently about getting another one. I’m convinced it’s the only style that suits the shape of my head.
Check out http://www.bandofhorses.com/
It’d be OK if you grew a walrus moustache
Bowlers are very tricky. That one suffers from looking quite a bit too large for you, thus contributing to the dorkiness.
Would that be Doselle Young (the only Doselle I can think of)?? Enquiring rocks want to know.
I loves me a good hat, but I think of Ben Vereen in “Pippin” and Sammy Davis Jr.
Then I put my ball cap back on, like a good middle-aged engineer.
(Here at Lockheed, the lunchtime stroll is mostly engineers in button-down shirts and ball caps.)
C’mon, people … I *can’t* be the only person who immediately thought of Badger. Surely not. The resemblance is uncanny.
BADGER FROM FIREFLY.
Why hello there, guv’na!
Actually, it makes you look a gorram lot like Badger in Firefly…
(Any chance of you modelling a Jayne hat next?)
Any chance of you modelling a Jayne hat next?
Scalzi you may not pull off the bowler hat look, but you have the “axe murdering maniac” look down in spades! :)
I am clearly not he.
You’re doing it wrong.
The brim should be level, not cocked back.
Not to say you can’t carry it off – but you’re not even giving the bowler a fair chance.
@ #17, Jeremiah G: I, too, read that as BrainPal. Three times.
Personally, I’m partial to the cloche hat, and a beret does wonders to accommodate long hair. It does tend to make one a bit identifiable as “the one in the hat.”
Perhaps a “comrade” style hat for John?
Try not to look like someone’s giving you a toe job under the tablecloth while explaining the meaning of life, the universe and everything. The bowler is a hat that requires a certain degree of gravitas. (I’ve no idea what ‘gravitas’ is, except Morgan Freeman has it all.)
@Cat Vincent
Oh! I would pay good (well, mediocre) money to see that!
Fletcher @24, I was immediately on that, but then skidded on how it’s a pretty cunning hat, and how you see a man in a hat like that and you know he’s afraid of nothing.
After looking at that picture, I want to nominate you for to be in the running for the Mad Hatter for the next Batman movie…
Try a fedora. Wear a brown one and you’re Indiana Jones (front and back brims down.) Wear a gray one, and you’re Sam Spade (back brim up).
Maroon, and you’re Carmen Sandiego (where have you been, by the way?).
I don’t think it’s because you look too old for it. I think it’s because you’re likely to be arrested as the Artful Dodger, for all those unsolved pick-pocketings in London, oh so many years ago.
Here’s a link to a photo of someone wearing a bowler properly. Properly fitted and straight on the head.
Also, as others have noted, a certain gravitas* is needed. Face stubble and a shit-eating grin does not cut the mustard. Go for clean shaven (or a tightly trimmed beard/moustache), straight posture, and — at most — a slight, cynical smirk.
*”gravitas” is not that stuff that holds you onto those planety-type thingies.
The Fashion Police know your name, Scalzi….
Malcolm Tredinnick:
Ironically, I played the Artful Dodger in a production of Oliver! many years ago. No bowler hat, though.
I think you look quite dapper, good sir. I curtsy in your general direction!
Scalzi, you’re not thinking ahead. Remember Bacon Cat Chick? If you let it be known ahead of time that you are wearing a bowler hat to a con, eventually a hot babe will get it into her head to do Mrs. Peel cosplay. Just, you know, saying.
And hell, if it works for Phil Foglio it should work for you. I think you just need a smaller hat.
C’mon, people … I *can’t* be the only person who immediately thought of Badger. Surely not. The resemblance is uncanny.
Thaaaat’s what I’m remembering. My brain recognized him immediately, but (being about halfway through my second glass of wine) it kept going to “one of those vaguely pimp-like creatures from a Jeremy Brett/Sherlock Holmes movie.”
But yes, Badger. That’s who I was thinking about. Badger.
Stupid brain.
Yes to Badger.
Unfortunately my first “separated at birth” was Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange. That might be the crazy eyes as opposed to the hat, though.
I kinda think you need a Peter-Pan collar with that hat.
Well who knows what one will get if they type ‘whatever’ into a google search….apparently this Mr. Scalzi in his hat…..cheers from Oregon and way to rock the bowler hat!
As others have already noted, the hat is too large and not worn at the right angle. Silly man, you have to work the hat if you are going to don it, not let the hat work you.
I went straight to Alex from A Clockwork Orange too. Is there a codpiece somewhere out of shot?
With that unholy gleam in his eye, stephbg?
We’ll be lucky if it’s only a codpiece.
So do you want us to start calling you Didi or Gogo? I’d just call you Lucky but you seem perfectly capable at talking at length without your hat on.
http://www.allwearbowlers.com/
maybe you could just join up with these guys?
“One thing I could never stand is to see a filthy old drunky howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going Blerp Blerp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who flashed on A Clockwork Orange.
Needs more green apple.
You look more like a straw boater type of guy.
And in the name of all that is holy, DO NOT wear a beret. Please. It’s like crossing the streams, only worse.
There is a bit of the Dodger there.
Or Wimpy.
But cute.
I saw this photo in your Flickr stream the other day, and the first thing that popped into my head: “Huh. That guy from Depeche Mode finally cheered up.”
No adorable street urchin, but you look like the long-lost Marx brother. A career in vaudeville awaits.