RECTOVERSO: Straw Hats-Linen...and Sunscreen

Last Monday was a somber day for me. LFG was back in school after one of our typically great weeks of vacation debauchery. Debauchery defined as less than rigorous hygiene demands, no curfew and bad food. But at some point we all have to re-engage in more structured and responsible deportment. And I re-engaged Monday morning in linen…with the pastiest ankles to accompany my favorite fabric. It’s only April so the ankle color is similar in shade to the trouser.

And the rest of my rig needed to be a bit less fuzzy in keeping with Monday’s somber nature. Earth tones topped off with a brown polka dot pocket square. One of my house-model Flussers… 3/2 rolled open patch pockets… seemed appropriate.

Which brings me to the other driver of Monday’s somberness…my skin. I’ve abused it in every way possible since I was old enough to seek the sun and it now shows. I’ve seen sixty year old sun avoiders with healthier, younger skin than mine. I get rather pasty in the winter but can get brown as a berry in the summer…and I always have until now. Sunscreen? Cursory daubs from time to time but I spent my life from birth till now doing all the summertime things that damage your skin. I wore a porn star mustache briefly in 1979 but no sunscreen.

So I took the Metro on Monday morning to a Dermatologist office in D.C. I knew the lashing I was gonna get before ever meeting this very nice and almost too young to be out of her residency, Dermatologist. I had, luckily, only a few pre-cancerous little visitors that needed to be looked at and all will be fine…if I avoid the sun. A little zap here and a couple of prescriptions later and she’ll see me in a couple of months…right in the middle of sun tan time. Oy.

Which brings me to the issue of hats. I’ve never worn a straw dress hat. My spiritual and pragmatic mentor Toad is the hat king. But as soon as I saw this picture of Tommy Hitchcock in his straw pork pie hat, I declared that if I could ever find one of that caliber, I might give it a go. I love the dichotomy of straw and madras topping off Hitchcock in his camel hair Polo coat.

But even with my level of not giving a shitake about rules and my love of all things fuzzy, I’ve never peered over into the straw-dress hat realm. Some people were born for hats. Toad seems as straw hat-esque as anyone.

Some people can sport esoteric straw hats with panache and aplomb. People ask me about this picture when they visit but I have nothing to provide. I don't know anything about this fella other than I bet he'd be fun at cocktail parties.

Some folks should leave straw hat esoterica to those who can execute on eccentricity.

So I’m walking to the Dermatology office and the sun is beating down on my head and I can feel it. Really feel it…the hair back there ain’t what it used to be. I encounter the windows of J.Press at about the same time and their hats are appropriately sitting in the windows. I’d already decided to stop in on them during my walk back from the Derm office. I needed to get a gift for a buddy.

This guy was having lunch at a place right beside J.Press and I immediately saw his rig as more ADG centric than if he’d had a straw hat on. Seersucker and a baseball hat…certainly more my speed.

So I go for my scolding and my medicine and sulk back over to J. Press. Gift shirt and a couple of grosgrain watch bands in hand and I’m ready to roll. And then I begin looking at hats. Not these. I’ll wear baseball caps before I don these Trad yet goofball looking things.

But the little modified brim Porkpie provokes me a bit. Coincidentally, it matches my outfit and it isn’t one of those, albeit perhaps aptly priced, three-hundred dollar things. It’s fairly cheap. And I don’t think it looks too absurd when I give it a go.

So I’m now headed to the Farragut North Metro stop in a Porkpie straw hat.

I’m good with it. Really, I mean how much more self-conscious could a guy like me become after donning this straw topper? None actually. Remember, I’m the guy who wears slippers, outside of the house. Shut up.