A hot hat: Fedora gives an old-school thrill

SEATTLE — I am wearing a fedora!

I felt a giddy confidence as I walked — nay, strode — from the hat shop downtown. I searched the faces of people I passed, hoping one might give me an insider's knowing nod.

"Your hipness is almost blinding," that nod would say. "Bravo."

Days earlier I had embarked on a quest to find a fedora, one of the season's trendiest women's accessories, according to a fashion director at Seattle-based Nordstrom. Surely, I thought, the winter drizzle could only amplify the mannish hat's appeal in the Pacific Northwest.

But phone calls and visits to boutiques and department stores turned up just three fedoras, all too large for my head or too steep for my budget.

I despaired briefly, then found an old-school store called Byrnie Utz Hats, in business since 1934, outlasting countless fads.

On the street, in my jaunty fedora, I waited in vain for that nod. I walked into an Italian cafe to grab a sandwich and had to prod a response (mild approval) from the girls behind the counter.

In the office, the fedora got a few quizzical glances. We stopped my editor in his tracks, but I attribute that to his sense of comic timing.

Still, the hat was giving me an unexpected thrill. I felt like I was broadcasting boldness and individuality. I had trouble concentrating for the rest of the afternoon.

I also loved that the hat kept my head warm and dry. It protected my eyes from the sun while I drove. But it really wasn't much of a conversation starter, even at the dinner table. I actually got the feeling people were avoiding acknowledging it.

Despite mounting paranoia that I wasn't meant to be a fedora girl, I grew attached to it. I took a few sultry self-portraits with my computer's Webcam and posted them on Facebook. In response, a colleague alluded to Justin Timberlake, while another employed the verb "thuggin'."

It was Rita, a tattooed skinny-jeans-wearing barista at my local coffee shop, who ultimately saved the fedora from a future on the floor of my closet. I walked in for my usual double-tall nonfat latte wearing the fedora, and she blurted out something like, "Hey, I didn't know you were cute."

And then, as if to finally prove the transformative power of the fedora, she asked if I wanted a double Americano.