Follow-up to “Hats as a shorthand for character”
Posted By Steven Lewis on July 1, 2009
Ruben Guthrie (Toby Schmitz), a young creative director for an advertising agenc
Last night I went to see Brendan Cowell’s entertaining but overly-simple play about alchoholic advertising executive Ruben Guthrie.
I wrote in an earlier post (Hats as a shorthand for character) that I’d picked up the postcard advertising the show because of the picture of the young man in the top hat. I doubted the top hat would feature in the show and, having seen it now, I can confirm that it doesn’t (nor does the scarf).
It confirms what we already know: different types of hats are imbued with meaning and values. Your choice of hat is telegraphing something to other people because of associations already concieved. The interesting question is What? What associations, stereotypes and pre-conceptions are associated with what type of hat? For instance, Cowell himself was in the audience last night wearing a patchwork tweed bucket hat that said to me “I’m creative, confident and slightly unusual”.)
This is something I’d like to explore, probably in an instalment of the Open Crown podcast, and I’d love your views on different hat types and how they’re perceived: What is an onlooker going to conclude (rightly or wrongly) about the wearer of a particular type of hat?
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Stingy Brim hats are GENERALLY indicative of stingy people. Exception of the FL crowd whom are all so stingy they wish to get wide brim hats for nothing.
Beyond the wearer’s choice of form and function in headwear, symbolically the hat identifies the wearer into a social or cultural grouping. I can think of no other sartorial item that does this more clearly than the hat.
Look at Victorian times where the height of the top hat indicated very clearly ones position in society. Coach men wore short crown top hats while gents were immediately visible in the street wearing top hats up to 8 inches high.
Hats indicate to others very clear messages about what you wish to communicate to others about yourself.
Hats in stage and screen tell the audience about the character in a non verbal way.
Getting back to Ruben Guthrie, the unconcious message here with the top hat and the stripe scalf is a reference to the greatest rogue we know, Fagen from Oliver Twist.
So give some thought to your next hat purchase. How do you want others to percieve who you are?