My brother Sam wore a beret for exactly one Halloween, as a mime, and has never let me forget that I’ve owned four of them since without a costume in sight. That’s the whole tension with this hat. Half of us think a beret is the fastest way to look like you have a point of view about your own head, the other half think it’s the fastest way to look like you’re trying, and I’ve genuinely lived on both sides of that line depending on the week.
What nobody tells you before you open the box is how much the hat depends on your ears. Mine stick out a little, and the first one I bought, a thin wool number that looked so good on the model I didn’t check anything else, sat on top of my head like a manhole cover instead of settling in. It needs weight and it needs enough fabric to actually drape, otherwise you’ve bought a pancake, and I did, for eighteen dollars, and wore it exactly twice.
Hair changes everything about this, more than I expected.
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Hair up, it works, you get that clean line at the neck and the beret actually reads as a shape instead of just a thing sitting on a pile of hair fighting it for space. Hair down, especially if it’s got any volume to it, the beret gets shoved backward within an hour and starts looking like it’s sliding off, which is its own kind of bad. Glasses are the real test though. Anything with a stiff brim looks fine on a bare head and then fights the frame the second glasses go on, so the good ones sit far enough back that my glasses and the hat aren’t having an argument over the same two inches of forehead.
The pick that split the room hardest here is a slouchy oversized one, more fabric than a beret has any right to have, and half of us think it looks like an artist who’s about to say something insufferable at a gallery opening, the other half think that’s exactly the point and wore it out four times in one week. I’m not going to pretend that one’s for everybody. On the wrong head it reads costume, full stop, and I’d rather say that than let you find out on the subway.
The one I keep reaching for is a plain wool version, not thin, not slouchy, just enough structure that it holds its own line without needing me to fuss with it in a mirror for ten minutes, which is more than I can say for the eighteen dollar mistake still sitting in a drawer as a monument to buying on looks alone.
