Hats are a relatively indiscriminate fashion choice. For starters, you can buy them at gas stations, when we all know the only things you buy at gas stations are gas and Tic-Tacs to combat the taste of the gas. There is no real standard for owning or wearing a hat as long as the owner has a head, just as long as it isn't a visor. Visors are the most pointless of affectations, as George Carlin pointed out decades ago and Steve Spurrier ran into the ground. Visors aren't hats. Visors are a board with a strap on the back. The only way a visor could be a worse idea is if the wearer were actually bald.
Everything else from toques to berets to the nattiest or rattiest ballcap are on fashion scholarship, as they work as both a utilitarian and fashion choice depending on the logo on the front—except the Yankees and Red Sox. As Comrade Xu pointed out, those are enforced choices based on lack of selection. The wearer can rise or fall based on the logo involved (extra credit for old, defunct teams like the Montreal Expos or Fort Wayne Kekiongas), but the base line is "fine, whatever."
But the higher up the hat chain, the riskier the decision and the greater the opportunity for well-earned derision, which is how we found out about the red fedora.
Fedoras are affectations by definition, unless it's 1953 and you are either at a World Series game or moonlight as a contract killer. You can look good with one, but you could also look preposterous. And in the following case, like a total mark.
On a summer trip to Europe with others including the Wife Of Wives, we were walking the touristy backstreets of Barcelona (as opposed to the actual backstreets) when we happened upon a hat store, and upon said red fedora in the sales window. The hat wasn't needed and had never been an item of desire as in, Boy, I'd kill in a red fedora. But it was sturdy, well made, and the annoying white feather in the brim could be removed. Plus, it stood out in the window among the more nondescript hats, blues, grays, browns and blacks that scream I am blandness, hear me mutter to nobody in particular. The red hat was none of those, so it became doable in our besotted state as a fashion choice. At a mere 80 euros that would otherwise have to be converted back into dollars at the airport at an exorbitant rate, the hat convinced me, as though merely seeing it was the contract of purchase. Upon reflection, it was an error, not catastrophic, but pointed enough that when it sneaks into view from the hook that holds it, it does so in haunted laughter.
Our companions can be blamed for saying that they liked it out of minimal standard courtesy, and the WOW was unfailingly encouraging about it ("It looks good on you. I like when you take chances with your head"), as is her traditional wont. If only they had asked the one salient question, OK, fine, but where would you wear it, you moron? The grocery store? They would be of no critical help here, which I should have realized. No, this is on me, as the first rule of window shopping is always in force, specifically: The window is a habitat, and it is always a low percentage move to remove something from its natural habitat (patent pending: Comrade S. Imbler, Habitat Expert).
The hat did its duty the rest of that day and the morning of the next, which was schlep-to-the-airport day; we were distracted by a wildcat taxi drivers strike that made contracting a ride the most urgent task. As an admirable and eye-catching choice, it even survived the airport and boarding, but upon deplaning it suddenly felt like mismatched shoes on the wrong feet. We're not sure why, but somewhere beyond the Azores but short of final approach, it left the realm of natty and entered the darker category of "stolen from an organ grinder's monkey," even though nobody has grinded an organ in a century, and keep your filthy thoughts to yourselves, you rutting animals.
The geographical position of the plane is irrelevant, however. The hat slowly metamorphosed into "this stupid thing I have to hold in my lap because it would have been crushed in the overhead bin by some Midwestern university bowling team coming back from their Semester At Sea trip, the inconsiderate fictional bastards." It was worn through the airport upon arrival because I needed free hands for bag totage, and while nobody could have cared (everyone looks like an idiot when they're waiting fore their bags because they all have ridiculous articles of something that they have taken unmerited pride in having purchased away from home), I was sure they were all staring at the guy wearing the red onion on his head. I mean, I would have.
The red fedora has not been worn since, which is probably why it scorns silently while being of sufficient quality that makes it too good to discard. The WOW hasn't asked me to wear it for any function, which is a telltale hint that she silently regards it as just another 80 some-odd bucks tossed down a sewer grate. It will hang on that hook until death or arson.
In summation, it has risen on the list of ill-advised notions from suboptimal to cursed, and cursing, all at once. But at least there's a lesson here for you all to heed. Absolutely everything looks better on a styrofoam head with no facial features in a sterile window, and invariably looks worse once removed. And we all must live with the soul-draining truth that in most cases, your face will ruin nearly anything with which you want to associate it, so when in doubt, don't. Save the money for drinking.
