If you know you know. That’s a phrase that’s often said in the USA – although: You don’t even have to say it, a wink or nod is often enough to express: You know, right? That’s how it is in the evil and therefore brilliant TV series “Succession“: For those who don’t know, the solid color baseball caps that Logan and Kendall and Shiv wear in them are pretty boring accessories, maybe dusted off at a thrift store.
Only if you know you know: Kendall’s seemingly inconspicuous hat, for example, belongs to the Brunello Cucinelli collection and costs $395. Or this cap from the label Loro Piana made of vicuna wool: 1395 dollars. Sure, there might be a New Era 59FIFTY hat, but then the one for $88. Those in the know know this immediately.
Proletariat, chav, swank, swagger – this is how the baseball cap evolved
Cockiness through understatement – that’s the departure from the yuppie bangers in Bret Easton Ellis’ evil and therefore brilliant novel “American Psycho”.“who reassure themselves of their masculinity through the material, typeface and ink of their business cards. But it’s also a further evolution of the baseball cap, from proletariat to chav, ostentation, and pageantry to that quiet kind of swagger.
The baseball cap is traditionally the identifying feature of the worker in the USA; ordinary people can also be recognized in films by the fact that they wear hats – for example shark hunters (Robert Shaw 1975 in “Jaws”), oil rig toilers (Matt Damon 2021 in “Stillwater”) or truckers like Sylvester Stallone in 1987 “Over the Top,” which also provides the rather ridiculous metaphor that flipping your cap is like starting a truck.
The cap as a sign of identification for ordinary people: Robert Shaw as shark hunter Quint in the thriller “Jaws”.
(Foto: Mary Evans/imago images)
In the past, the cap only indicated membership in a sports club or high school team or membership in gangs, the boys in the rap combo NWA, for example, wore hats from the LA Raiders. And of course the baseball cap was the piece of evidence that German vacationers had been to New York (Yankees) or LA (Dodgers).
Then, at the beginning of the noughties, there was an intermezzo of the bling-bling caps of the money and wannabe-money people. In this context, the documentary “The Curse of Von Dutch: A Brand to Die For” about the corresponding fashion label is highly recommended. Also briefly on the scene: hipster foam hats with semi-ironic slogans, made famous by Judah Friedlander in the series “30 Rock”; now the comedian wears hats with sayings in sign language.
What is comedian Judah Friedlander trying to say with this cap? Here’s the translation: World Champion.
(Foto: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
The renaissance of blue collar hats was the ingenious marketing tool of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2015: The red hat with the Make America Great Again slogan for 15 dollars suggested: I’m one of you. Of course, the sale brought millions of dollars into his campaign coffers, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen again. It is no coincidence that there is a new hat that Trump wants to have designed himself. It looks amazingly like the old one, and it sends out the message: I’ll be back.
Former US President Donald Trump during an appearance in Arizona on January 15, 2022. He still uses the slogan from the 2015 election campaign, although it has long been old hat.
(Photo: Carlos Barrio/Reuters)
Of course, it’s only a small step from Trump to “Succession”: The series is inspired, among other things, by Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire, especially the TV station Fox News, is still the court reporter and thus the most important campaign tool for Trump. Only, and therein lies the genius of baseball caps without a logo: Trump, the chav with the ill-fitting suits, would love to be part of society as a true New Yorker and has been trying for decades – unsuccessfully because he wouldn’t understand the cocky understatement.
By the way, the hats without logos from “Succession” are in a larger context. Back in 1996, Chuck Palahniuk wrote in his wicked and therefore brilliant novel Fight Club how ridiculous it is to wear underpants with another man’s name on them. More cases of understatement: driving a nondescript retro Ford Bronco instead of a Lamborghini – but in the luxury version for $150,000. Or these plain black sneakers from Maison Margiella for $795. The Rocky Balboa Light Gray Tracksuit from Loro Piana for $2995; By the way, there is also one by Olivia von Halle, for 1460. Or the hats in “Succession”.
The world’s most expensive men’s outfitter, found on Rodeo Drive where the yellow Bugatti is parked (that German tourists in Dodgers hats love to take pictures of), is called Bijan, by the way. How, never heard? Well yes: If you know you know.
