SIMPLE STYLE
Awide-brimmed straw hat is one of the more elegant symbols of summer. The simple act of placing one on your head not only protects your face and eyes from the sun, enveloping them in soft shade, but it bestows instant chic. Whatever you wear with it – from swimsuit, to shorts, to a summer dress – a sun hat adds an extra flourish. It’s a rare thing: an accessory that is both stylish and practical.
If you think that wearing a sun hat is not for you – it will make your nose look big, lead to ‘hat hair’ or make your head hot, perhaps – think again: there is a sun hat to suit everyone. This summer, fashion bloggers and the fashion press have been preoccupied with enormous floppy hats (the La Bomba by Jacquemus, £325, is their favourite). While these look great on Instagram, they’re a little unwieldly in the garden when pulling up weeds, or on the beach tripping between car park and picnic rug. Fortunately, floppy hats with smaller brims – at more affordable prices – are available, and have the added advantage of being quicker and less messy than walloping on SPF at summer events.
If you are after something snappier, straw sun hats come in several classic hat shapes. There’s the Panama, originally woven from the fibres of the toquilla palm tree in Ecuador and sold to ‘discerning gentlemen’. With its wide brim and breathable material, it proved a comfortable way to shield the wearer from the sun and was soon adopted by appreciative women.
The fedora is a similar shape, with the same indent at the top, but has a narrower brim and is pinched at the front. The hat of choice of Cerys Matthews, it was first worn by cross-dressing actress Sarah Bernhardt in 1882 in a role as Russian Princess Fedora Romanzov. The trilby, with its narrow brim turned up at the back, was originally favoured by upper class men to wear at the races. Several straw versions for women now exist and make a rakish sun hat alternative.
The one downside to straw sun hats, of course, is that they are difficult to pack. If you are hopping on a plane, best take a canvas bucket hat, which can be pulled out of a pocket and plonked on your head as the sun beats down. There are sure to be straw hats to buy when you get there for that extra dash of beach élan.
“A sun hat is less messy than walloping on SPF at summer events”