Hugh Jackman is celebrity hat wearer of the year
Posted By Steven Lewis on June 2, 2009
The publicity-savvy hatmakers of Luton have named Hugh Jackman and Carla Bruni as celebrity hat wearers of the year.
“Hugh Jackman’s outback hat, worn in the film Australia, not only achieved instant fame on the big screen but also popularised the look for men’s casual wear generally,” said Philip Wright of Walter Wright hat manufacturers.
Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Australia
In the first Open Crown podcast I said — funnily enough — we needed someone like Hugh Jackman to start wearing hats to lead other men to follow.
Unfortunately I think Philip Wright is heroically drawing a long bow to say that Drover’s battered Akubra has done or will do anything to popularise either that look or hat wearing generally.
It’s dubious that it’s even popularised hatwearing for Hugh himself (a Google images search turns up nothing but hatless Hugh). I could be wrong, though: Wright is quoted in the Telegraph (UK) saying, “Mr Jackman has also been seen sporting some stylish trilby and pork pie hats off screen.” And Rosie, who made Hugh the famous Akubra, says in the podcast that she’s seen him stepping off a plane wearing a snappy hat.
Still, I dispute the likely rise in urban Akubra wearing. In Australia, Akubras are firmly associated with the country. Most young Australian men (and their fathers, come to that) would be as likely to wear an Akubra around Sydney or Melbourne as a New Yorker would be to top off an outfit with a Stetson Hertitage. And this is a climate where we should be wearing Akubras.
I’d love to be wrong of course and see the streets of Luton and elsewhere in the world full of outback hats but, in the meantime, a hat tip to Philip Wright for managing to get the topic of hat wearing in the news for a little while.
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[...] has published an article on hat wearing as flimsy as the hook on which they’ve hung it: the celebrity hat wearer of the year announcement. The article raises the familiar question of why men stopped wearing hats in the 1960s; and asks [...]