Country Clothing – Hats and Waterproofs
Hats
‘The hat maketh the man’ or so I was once told at a gentleman’s outfitters. A good hat adds a touch of style to any outfit, and can make someone instantly recognisable. Think of characters such as Charlie Chaplin, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon Bonaparte. I bet you can remember their hats? Why not become known for wearing a certain type of hat? If Laurel and Hardy could do it, then so can we. Okay, perhaps that’s not the best example, but you get the idea…
When I was 18, my brother-in-law and I ceremoniously burnt our baseball caps. We decided, from that moment onwards, that we would only ever wear traditional hats. We stuffed our caps with paper; set light to them and sat back to watch the smoke rise and the hats reduce to ash. The experience was, in effect, a coming of age ceremony. We later visited a tailor’s shop in Ludlow, each purchasing a traditional hat. Mine was a Wexford Trilby; his was a tweed cap.
A hat says a lot about the person who wears it. I have many. Some suit me, some don’t. It doesn't matter. I just love wearing them. The Tweed Trilby lasted me for ten years before it shrank in the rain whilst I was fishing. These days I mostly wear tweed flat caps, of which I have about a dozen. Mrs H says I look best in a flat cap. I wear them because they capture my ‘gardener, countryman, angler’ character. I have three favourites. The first is a York cap (known as the Eccy-thump, purchased from Snooks of Bridport). It is especially wide with a pronounced peak and reminds me of the type worn by labourers in the first half of the 20th Century. The second is my writing cap, a plain tweed flat cap that’s a bit on the small side but sits nicely on my head when writing or drawing. The third is the son of the August Dumpling, a huge, podgy thing that can only be worn in safe company. I also have a felt Trilby, tweed deerstalkers (with and without ear flaps) and a straw hat. The latter is great for use in the summer, but does make me look like a cricket umpire. Top of my list of hats to try on is a brown bowler. By my reckoning, this ought to capture the old-fashioned gardener look just as well as a flat cap. Head Gardeners used to wear Top Hats or Bowlers, so wearing a Bowler might make me feel like I’d been promoted. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll be telling you about it if I make a purchase.
Waterproofs
I’m a big fan of Barbour waxed jackets. They and I have a long history, which means that a modern jacket could never appeal to me as much as the traditional alternative. I only have to smell the wax, feel the greasy texture of the fabric and rigidity of the fabric to know that they are for me.
I remember, as a child, nagging my parents to buy me a waxed jacket. My dad and uncle had them and, I wanted one too. But my parents declined my pleas, citing ‘an inevitable growth spurt’ that would see me quickly outgrow such an expensive item. I must have worn them down eventually, as I got a waxed jacket for my 14th birthday. It was fabulous – dark green waxed cotton, with a corduroy collar, leather trimmed cuffs, moleskin hand pockets and shiny brass zips. It lasted me until I was 16 when, during the school’s summer holiday, I grew from 4ft 10in to 5ft 9in. I’m sure that, as the sleeves of the jacket rose quickly up my arms, my parents were thinking ‘I told you so…’
I purchased my next wax jackets whilst at horticultural college. I had a light one for summer and a padded one (made by Musto) for winter. I got them from a charity shop and, as I later discovered, a local farmer had owned them. I wore the padded one on a date with a very pretty blonde who, after seeing me arrive on my bicycle at her college dorm, ran over to me, put her arms around me, breathed in deeply and said ‘Mmm, I love the smell of a waxed jacket and, erm, sheep…’ The date was cancelled and I retreated to the college bar.
I’ve since purchased three wax jackets, which I still use to this day (all which were second-hand when I bought them, and each one is older than me). I have a Northumbria, a Solway Zipper (from which I removed the arms so to use it as a Gilet) and a Trench Coat. All of these meet my requirement for a longer jacket to keep my thighs dry. (I don’t like shorter jackets such as the Border, as they are barely long enough to keep my backside dry when sitting in wet grass. The exception is the Spey wading jacket, which is excellent. It is on my shopping list along with the Dry Fly jacket.) When worn with Wellington boots or gaiters, longer wax jackets keep my legs almost entirely dry.
These days, I need only to smell a wax jacket and my mind is instantly transported to the hilltops of Wales and valleys of Worcestershire. The smell evokes memories of walking and fishing in the Welsh mountains and shooting in the farmland around Pershore. Such smells (like the scent of a spent shotgun cartridge, anti-mosquito cream, or tea from a Thermos flask) define some of the happiest moments of my teenage years. No amount of modern fabrics, spray-on waterproofing agents, or advertising campaigns could overwrite the sentiments I have for wax jackets. They are part of my DNA.
If you like this blog, then you might like Fine Things, Fennel's Journal No. 8
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