HOW TO DRESS LIKE A GROWN UP Your guide to scoring a summer hat trick
ONE good thing about this Hottest Ever Summer has been it coinciding with the baseball cap topping the fashion charts. You know this already but just to re-cap (ho ho), Celine has made the baseball cap — not so long ago the preferred headgear of frat boys and celebrities travelling incognito — cool headwear for anyone, any time.
You might wear your baseball cap to head to the gym (Princess Di style), walking to work (Heidi Klum), sightseeing/shopping (Kaia Gerber, right, and Cindy Crawford), or sitting down to lunch alfresco.
The only place you aren’t wearing it is indoors.
Better still, it doesn’t have to be branded or cost more than a few quid. Providing it isn’t sweat stained, stamped with Make America Great Again, adorned with novelty moose antlers and is reasonably good quality, almost any baseball cap will punch up your look.
Entirely thanks to Celine, this baseball cap will confer a frisson of in-the-know to your outfit — a bit like the right pair of sunglasses.
There are three simple rules . . . One, keep it plain with a reasonably deep crown and peak. Those soggy pancake baseball caps will not do but it’s equally important not to accidentally get yourself a trucker cap which are the ones with the heavier square crowns.
Keep your hair sleek and sporty, in a pony tail or up. The one thing that looks all wrong with baseball caps is wild and bushy or flowing tonged hair. Also this is not a hat to wear with heels — pretty dress with YOu sporty shoes, absolutely fine.
can pick up a baseball cap in your local supermarket, but if you want to know where to go for good shape and quality then Arket is top of the list, and if you go for a bright colour like apple green, they’re now reduced from £35 (£18, arket.com).
Hush does a baseball cap
(£ 19, hush-uk.com) also in breathable cotton (don’t be tempted by linen it looks stiff and wrong) and Sweaty Betty does the sort of crisp cap you can imagine Victoria Beckham wearing (£ 25, sweatybetty. com). She has her own baseball cap in collaboration with Reebok (£55, victoriabeckham. com) but this one seems less serious and better value. You can’t beat a navy cap, although my vote is to get a couple in
different colours in the under £20 bracket. I have a shocking pink one which is great for swimming where there are boats or any situation where it pays to stand out (a festival crowd), and pale pink is lovely in the sun.
The real cap (£40, uk.realisation par.com) with the Realisation logo embroidered in white, or ‘exotica erotica’ in red, is the one your cool niece will thank you for buying her. When it comes to logos for grown ups, we want one that fades into the background — or none at all.
I don’t suit a cotton baker boy hat (the ones with the softer crowns and shallow
peaks) and it’s true they don’t give you the same sun protection, but if you do, they are cute and appealing and I’d get one in cream asap (£20, hushuk. Tuck your hair up and keep it on in the autumn with a polo neck.
Of course, caps are not for everyone, in which case you have two clear choices this summer — the panama or the fashion sunhat.
The only rule with panamas is that they must not look papery, they need a grosgrain ribbon and if the brim is too mean they won’t flatter you as much. Hush has a decent straw panama in the sale (£60). The wider-brimmed one, by four centimetres, is not in the sale (£79) — I’d go for that if you can stretch to it.
The fashion sunhat of the hour is the bucket hat but, as I’ve said before, I can’t recommend that (too Madchester, too blokey) unless it’s a bigger rimmed ‘fisherman’ version (£13, asos.com) or straw (£35, cos.com).
There is nothing wrong with a wide-brimmed straw hat, but the mood of the moment is not La Collins in the South of France, it’s more utilitarian with glamour. So the way to go would be a straw fedora (£28, aspiga.com) or to browse the brilliant (not cheap) selection at wolfandbadger.com.
A bit of black straw in the mix is always chic.