Why should it be so difficult to find a Frank Lloyd Wright hat?
Wright’s pork pie hat has a very shallow crown. Its brim is either wide (that is, wide for a fedora) or rather narrow (that is, narrow for a cowboy hat). I’ve always thought that Wright’s hat was an expression of his aesthetic, a look equally at home in Arizona’s red-rock canyons or New York City’s canyons of steel and glass.
Wright’s hat didn’t come out of nowhere. Wright biographer Meryle Secrest credits the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States, Elbert Hubbard, with inspiring Wright’s style. In the early 1900s, stiff black suits were the common costume. Hubbard went with loose tweeds and a cape. Longish hair flowed out from a “broad-brimmed, soft-crowned hat that Wright would make his own.” The essential Wright outfit would include the hat, a “perfectly superfluous cane,” which the architect used to exaggerate sweeping gestures, and a cape rather than a coat. “No one who ever saw him make an entrance in that regalia ever forgot him,” Secrest wrote, making the get-up “a useful tool in the game of self-promotion.”
There are pictures of Hubbard wearing his version of what we might call the philosopher’s cowboy hat, perhaps most poignantly upon the deck of the Lusitania in 1915. A German U-boat would put a torpedo into the ship during its Atlantic crossing. Hubbard went down with the ship. Wright was left as the nation’s most famous be-hatted artiste.
Given Wright’s enduring fame and his popularity as a character, I find it strange that his hat has not survived, not even just as a foppish fashion. Hat-making company Optimo did create a limited edition FLW hat called “The Wright,” priced at a mere $1,500. But other than that, it is a challenge to come up with anything that looks similar to the architect’s signature chapeau. Goodness knows I tried.
Out in Arizona a couple of weeks ago, I stopped in at an old shop in North Phoenix so crowded with hats that it felt like a hoarder’s bedroom. After digging through piles of inventory for about half an hour, I found a light tan cowboy hat that looked as if it could be made to mimic the architect’s topper. The owner of the store gave it a try: He steamed and blocked the crown into a flat-topped pork pie and cut about an inch off the brim all the way around. It wasn’t bad. But it still wasn’t Wright — I mean right.
Before I return to my quest, I should point out that I’m a sucker for signature styles, modes of dress unique to people confident enough to establish their own aesthetics.
I don’t mean those who simply wear the same thing day in and day out. For example, Harvard University philosophy professor John Rawls seemed to have an inexhaustible closet full of khakis, blue Oxford button-down shirts, and gray tweed jackets. One might call it his signature style if only there were some style involved. It was an inoffensive look, a fashion with which there was nothing wrong. The only thing that made the Rawlsian wardrobe notable was its sheer repetition. It was strictly dullsville, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has slogged through his A Theory of Justice.
By contrast, true signature style involves doing something wrong, if you will. The best-dressed man in postwar Italy was Fiat honcho Gianni Agnelli. Among his sartorial quirks: He tied his ties so that the skinny end was significantly longer than the wide. Wrong, and boldly so. Most famously, Agnelli wore his watch over and around the cuff of his shirt. Wrong again, and dutifully copied by every style-conscious Italian man.
Or, consider Fred Astaire, who would knot a necktie around his waist, using it as a belt. Asked once why he did so, the elegant Astaire gave the best possible answer: “Because I like it.”
I finally found Watson’s Hat Shop in Cave Creek, a town north of Phoenix. They make Western hats, fedoras, homburgs, derbies, and top hats from scratch using vintage iron and steel hat-making machines that give the store a steampunk vibe. After careful perusal of photos of the be-hatted architect, Watson’s flattened the crown of my hat as far as it would go. They gave the edge of the brim a pronounced pencil curl all the way around, dipped it the front, and swept the sides up ever so subtly.
I have a few loose-fitting tweed suits with which to wear my homage hat. All I need, to complete the look, is a cane and a cape.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
