One of my ambitions -- of which there are indeed many -- was to adorn my cranium with a pork pie hat.
I can now report that I have achived what I set out to do and am now wearing -- even as I compose this tract -- a hat that can be classified as pork pie.
A pork pie hat looks like a pork pie crust when viewed from above.
But with the current fashion for Trilbys and Fedoras, pork pie hats are seemingly passe except for some archaic jazz musoes and Buster Keaton -- now very much dead.
So when visiting the southern climes this month I ventured into City Hatters under Flinders Street Railway Station in Melbourne where my da always bought his hats and grabbed the first officially labeled pork pie hat that appealed to me.
Much taken with my purchase I have been wearing my new hat with much savoir-faire these last 5 days since I first placed it upon my head at that magical moment just shy of 2pm on a Saturday arvo.
It was love at first sight.
It was love at first sight.
I am not a felt hat person outside the few cold months of mid year -- although I have notched up much head wear and tear under Akubras and Kangol caps as well as the the occasional beanie. This far norther they are too sweaty for my tender psyche housed below.
So I wanted my embrace of pork pies to be one of meshy texture which allowed for cooling breezes across my short haired dome.
With such comfort and coolness above my ears I am now dressed and in character -- being significantly pork pie-ed any time I am out and about.
My marriage to the hat of my choice soon proved to cross gender boundaries and I seem to have purchased a womens hat. While pork pie hats were originally an item of ladies attire, men embraced the style after the turn of the 19th century in time for Buster Keaton to wear a very flat version in his silent films.But my hat was built and designed for a woman's noggin . (So it is soft and not at all abrasive to my tender skin. It even puts my underpants to shame in that regard -- that is if I were to wear them on my head which I hardly ever do)
So I am cross dressing -- albeit ever so secretly as well as quite publicly-- and no one would suspect that I in fact, despite my brash machismo, have a penchant for ladies millinery .
A Pork Pie Crust. A Pork Pie Hat (felt)
Dave Riley is so pleased that he has handed down his Summer Fedora to his one and only son who seems to have now nailed it to his own head. Dave is convinced he has a 'pork pie' head and is a pork pie person and celebrated the discovery by watching both French Connection I and II as he is a Popeye Doyle -- as well as a Clete Purcell and Buster Keaton -- sort of guy.(That is if he was fictional which he is not.You lucky peoples can interact with the real thing).No matter what happens to a pork pie person they always retrieve their hat after fisticuffs, tumblings while drunk, or in cicrmstances of a big blow .
A millinery warning:
Verna: What're you chewin' over?
Tom Reagan: Dream I had once. I was walkin' in the woods, I don't know why. Wind came up and blew me hat off.
Verna: And you chased it, right? You ran and ran, finally caught up to it and you picked it up. But it wasn't a hat anymore and it changed into something else, something wonderful.
Tom Reagan: Nah, it stayed a hat and no, I didn't chase it. Nothing more foolish than a man chasin' his hat.Millers Crossing ( a film with much hat style)
