Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 28, 1992 TAG: 9201290294
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACIE FELLERS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
MAD ABOUT HATS
BASEBALL caps are booming.They're worn by the hip and the homey. By models sashaying down runways and by sports fans in stadiums.
They even top the heads of heads of state - President Bush and the Princess of Wales have been spotted sporting them.
From the covers of fashion magazines to city streets and from celebrities to children, the caps of the '90s are hotter than ever.
Susan Tildesley, director of the Headwear Institute of America in New York, says there are several reasons for baseball caps' rise in status. On the practical side, they can provide protection from the Floral print caps, such as this Hooray Henri cap, are expected to blossom in the spring elements, shielding skin from the sun's rays in summer and reducing heat loss through the head in winter.
Caps show allegiance to favorite sport teams. They are relatively inexpensive wardrobe additions: Most fall into the $5-to-$35 range.
And now, more than ever, "they're unisex," Tildesley says. "Even babies wear them." Not to mention the fact that baseball caps are the chapeaus of choice for trend-setting stars like Madonna and Spike Lee.
It all adds up to year-round popularity and profit. The Headwear Institute expects total headwear sales to reach $2.5 billion this year, a 10 percent increase over 1991 sales. Baseball caps are expected to account for 70 percent of those sales.
Baseball caps also mean big business for Robertson Marketing Group, a Salem company that embroiders and prints baseball caps and prints T-shirts, cups and other items for promotional purposes.
"The majority of our business is textiles, with hats being a big part of it," says sales manager John Robertson. RMG prints and embroiders 160,000 to 170,000 caps a year, Robertson estimates.
The company's cap clients are a diverse group, from newspapers to hospitals, banks to beach shops. "Every industry has caps," says Dave Robertson, John's brother, who also works in sales at RMG. "It's a status symbol. I had a client who told me: `I judge somebody's IQ by whether they're wearing a baseball cap in their car.' " He's seen caps displayed in the back windows of BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes, he adds.
John says that the ever-increasing variety of caps is responsible for revving up interest. "Baseball caps are becoming so much a fashion that our clients ask us every year what's new," he says.
It used to be that caps were available only in the basic colors - navy, red, black, white, he notes. Now caps come in a rainbow of HATS jump type hues and a dizzying array of styles, designed to attract wearers from the tres chic to the politically correct.
"Last year, neon caps were the thing," John says. But for spring, look for old-fashioned and updated pinstripe caps. You'll see environmentally conscious caps that have naturally colored, unbleached cotton crowns and bills in contrasting colors. Satin caps will make a showing, as will metallic caps, caps in floral patterns and tie-dye caps. And the latest - maybe strangest of all - are neon shatter-dye caps, which have a streaked, marbleized look.
You won't find any tie-dye or floral caps in the collection of Rudy Hann, a junior-varsity baseball and football coach at Salem High School. But a man who already has more than 4,000 caps doesn't have to be on the cutting edge. Hann, 47, has amassed so many caps in 20 years that he had to curtail his hobby.
"I slowed down," he says. "I just collect college, high school, pro [sports] hats now." In one room of his Yorkshire Street home, he displays 200 to 300 of the caps in his collection. The rest have been packed in boxes and stored in the attic.
"I used to have 'em all over the floor," he recalls. "You couldn't even get into that room at one time. My wife raised so much Cain, I boxed 'em up."
Carolyn Hann smiles as she admits to laying down the law. "I told him as long as you keep them in that room, it's fine. But if they come in the living room, no more hats."
That's one reason Hann donates 200 to 300 caps to the Salem Sports Foundation's annual yard sale - he has to make room for new ones. He buys some, like the Oklahoma cap he brought home from the Gator Bowl last month. "I bought me a Virginia hat but they got beat so bad I traded it in for an Oklahoma hat."
However, Hann enjoys his hobby most when he has to talk his way into a cap conquest. He gleefully recalls one such victory, which happened when he and Carolyn were on their way to visit a daughter in Knoxville, Tenn., last year.
The Texas motorist driving in front of the Hanns had a cap in his window that caught Rudy's eye. Both cars happened to pull off at the same rest area. So when the Texan got out of his car, Rudy asked to buy the cap from him. When the man declined the offer, Rudy gave the man his address and asked if he would send him a similar cap. Finally, Rudy said, the Texan agreed to give him the cap, printed with the name of a Texas high school.
That and other escapades have earned him a nickname - the Mad Hatter. "I'm crazy when it comes to hats," he says. "I'll worry you to death. They're happy to give 'em to me to get rid of me."
With folks like Rudy Hann around, it's hard to dispute Headwear Institute director Tildesley when she says baseball caps won't be old hat anytime soon: "It's not a fad. I really think it's here to stay."