Bezos’ cowboy hat fails to tip scales
When I saw Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, giving a returntoEarth news conference after his maiden space voyage on Tuesday, July 20, in a blue flight suit and dustyhued, widebrimmed cowboy hat, I laughed out loud.
Why is it that whenever an obscenely wealthy dude needs to demonstrate his pioneering spirit, and/or connection to the “common” man, he reaches for that particular accessory?
In his pseudo“Right Stuff” richguy onesie and Stetsonstyle hat, Mr. Amazon.com looked like a child mixing playtime narratives: Was he a spaceman, was he a cowboy, was he a space cowboy? All he needed was a pirate sword and Batman cape and his look would be complete. Social media also unleashed a cavalcade of opinions, with many weighing in that in spite of his billions, he didn’t have the postflight swagger to pull it off.
It’s not news that when you’re really, really rich, you get away with a lot of things — like starting your own space travel company, Blue Origin, and launching yourself 62 miles above Earth for 15 minutes. That also extends to getting away with certain fashion choices that look ludicrous out of proper context: Hugh Hefner’s uniform pajamas, for example, or Mark Zuckerberg’s uniform Tshirts. A cowboy hat in the zero gravity of space isn’t just unusual, it’s impractical.
The cowboy hat has come to represent everything from Western masculinity and Manifest Destiny colonialism to country music glitz and the bullish capitalism of the ’80s. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were masters at the brushclearing, Stetsonwearing photo op.
But more than anything, says William Reynolds, the author with Ritch Rand of “The Cowboy Hat Book,” it is a uniquely Americanidentified fashion item.
“The hat still carries that very selfsufficient look of the American cowboy,” Reynolds says. “It’s utilized as a symbol of individualism.”
Bezos’ particular hat, Reynolds says, is reminiscent of the one Robert Duvall wore as rancher Augustus “Gus” McCrae in the miniseries of Larry McMurtry’s novel “Lonesome Dove.” The top of the hat is pinched with a downward slope, the “Gus crease.”
Senior adjunct professor at California College of the Arts and dress historian Melissa Leventon notes that given the Blue Origin launch site in Van Horn, Texas, the hat choice “seems like an understandable thing for him to wear, given that it’s become such a signifier in dress of the heroic Texan image,” while also pointing out that the hat “differentiates him from images of astronauts in the 1960s in their globe space helmets.”
Over the years, Reynolds and Leventon say, the hat’s symbolism and associations have gone through a number of iterations, most influenced by evolving film and pop culture depictions of the West. The white/black hat good/bad guy dichotomy of early film cowboys eventually morphed into the antiheroes and “Easy Rider” modern outlaws of the ’60s and ’70s, giving the hats counterculture cool for a period. Women from Dolly Parton to Madonna have adopted cowboy hats more frequently in pop culture. Black gay recording artist Lil Nas X has notably challenged perceptions of who wears the look with his pink Versace fringe Western suit and matching cowboy hat at the 2020 Grammy Awards.
The secret to wearing any hat is a combination of confidence and effortlessness: If it looks like you’re trying too hard, the hat is wearing you. Bezos’ fashion decision looked so calculated to try to capture some of the 155 years of American symbolism, and heroic associations, that the cowboy hat carries that it looked like after playing astronaut, he decided to play Marlboro Man/Woody from “Toy Story” dressup.
While Reynolds thinks that Bezos wore the look well (he noted the quality of the fit and that he wasn’t wearing the hat too low over his eyes), I saw a straining, performative quality in the choice that looks as outoftouch with nonbillionaire space cadets as it looked out of place at his Tony Starkstyle news conference.
Unless you’re actually riding a range, any cool points the cowboy hat offers noncowboys is temporarily suspended.