THIS HAT HEADS OFF THE HEAT:

As a pale-skinned teenager yearning to tan, I’d lie on the beach for hours holding aloft sun reflectors tilted to bounce the rays onto my face. I usually ended up with a hideous searing red sunburn, instead of the glowing bronze I anticipated. Worse, I had no inkling all that youthful sunning exposed me to ultraviolet radiation that incubate skin cancer manifested decades later? (It did.)

That’s a very round-about but hopefully poignant way of introducing a newfangled sunhat that uses shiny coated reflective material to deflect UV waves, instead of attracting them.

While doing so, it also repels heat by reflecting the rays’ blaze away from the head. The not-so-humbly named

NASA Strength Sun Hat (the designers incorporated radiant barrier technology originally developed to protect astronauts) is basically a crushable, super-lightweight breathable nylon hat with a reflective silver nylon aluminum-foil-like film covering the crown and the wide semirigid brim. A protective layer of airy white mesh netting over the reflective material adds a stylish nautical touch. Two half-moon-shaped swaths of slightly stretchy featherweight mesh on each side of the crown provide ventilation, while a moisture-wicking sweat band encircles the forehead. A slim elastic band at the temple adjusts for tightness via a spring-loaded plastic toggle. A sewn-in neck strap can be cinched tight under the chin, or left dangling, allowing the hat to hang down your back when off duty. If that shiny 360-degree brim feels too flying saucer-esque, you can opt instead for the NASA Strength Desert Sun Cap, which has a baseball cap-style brim. A long wide nylon flap hangs down the back, protectively curving around the neck. The flap, crown and brim are covered with the same reflective aluminum nylon film and white netting as the hat version and also has the mesh ventilation panels, internal sweatband and adjustable elastic band at the temple. No neck strap with the cap — might spoil that Lawrence of Arabia look.