The Face asked me to do a little piece on the rise and fall of the trucker hat. It's in the September fashion issue:
Eulogy for the Trucker Hat (The Face)
September 2003.
It's hard to say precisely when the trucker hat made its first appearance in the realm of American indie coolness, or to determine its exact origins. One can only imagine that on a seemingly normal spring day approximately a year ago, an anonymous hipster in some urban mecca of disaffected irony—Austin, Williamsburg, take your pick—raided his grandfather's closet and found a foam hat with a mesh backing. The anonymous hipster then scratched his purposely scruffy chin, and thought, "I bet I can get away with wearing this in public."
And so the trucker hat trend was born, and an icon of blue-collar life in rural hamlets with limited fashion options went from chic to shit almost overnight. Celebrity stylists ruthlessly affixed them to the craniums of various clients, like Pharrell, Kelly Osbourne and Christina.
Now they shamefully sit in display windows of assorted international chain stores where any jerk from Ohio can purchase them and pretend that he, too, is an urban warrior with a flair for style and a subtle appreciation of working-class values.
How did this happen? Two words: Ashton Kutcher. Ashton began wearing the trucker hat as Punk'd debuted on MTV and climbed the ratings charts. Having escaped the confines of sitcom oblivion, Ashton's face and his hat were plastered all over every teen bedroom in America. The trucker hat was officially mainstreamed.
By mid-May, the trucker hat had become so ubiquitous that the New York Times ran a style section story declaring the trucker hat phenomenon "over." That its style section, not traditionally the arbiter of cutting-edge fashion, was even aware of its existence indicated that it had probably been "over" six months earlier.
By mid-July, even Ashton had abandoned his signature accessory for something far sexier—freshly botoxed arm candy in the form of 40-year-old Demi Moore. (Can you blame him?)
And where is the anonymous hipster who started it all? Trying on capri pants after getting his rat tail haircut trimmed in some dark corner of indie America, and thinking, "I bet I can get away with wearing this in public."
Posted by espiers at August 18, 2003 01:10 AMplease. just please make them all go away. pretty please.
but i wonder if i could make a buck or two with a line of trucker caps and ironic t-shirts.
the trucker caps will say: "People who wear 'ironic' t-shirts are f-cktards*."
the t-shirts will say: "People who wear trucker caps are assclowns*."
*Of course, I'd have to come up with a more hip curse word/slang term, I guess.
Posted by: ken at August 18, 2003 11:24 AMThank goodness the mullet is still hot. Right?
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at August 18, 2003 02:28 PMPeople wore these hats during the good old grunge days when I went to high school in Washington state in the early nineties. Maybe it just took this long for new yorkers to catch on and make it a big smelly accusationally uncool trend minute.
Posted by: ummmm at August 18, 2003 08:56 PMI believe the jerks in Ohio already had trucker hats, and will continue to wear them regardless.
Note to Ken: How about "asshat"? Everybody seems to like that one. It just gets fresher with every repetition.
Posted by: James at August 19, 2003 03:53 AMHow does the Face feel about your scooping them with this, or is it already on newsstands? I never did understand that idea of magazines post-dating their issues.
Posted by: Rick Bruner at August 19, 2003 03:31 PMIt's on newsstands. I never put anything up that's not out yet.
Posted by: Elizabeth at August 19, 2003 04:08 PMI was born a Norwalk Trucker. That is the mascot for Norwalk High School in Norwalk, Ohio. We were equi-distant between Chicago and New York and were once the Trucking Capitol of the world at one point. Trucker dads were the cool dads, because they could come see their grade school sons play in afternoon football games. They might not be there on Saturdy and Sunday, but they would get to be there on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. They also would have watermelon fresh up from Alabama in the summer, great produce, and sleeper cabins. We use to hang-out in the sleeper cabins like a clubhouse.
I use to wear my sister's Future Farmer's of America jacket to small bars where bands played. She got it from a Trucker boyfriend she was afraid of. He would tell people he was going to marry her with a zealot's look in his eyes. I liked that she put the jacket in the back of the closet. I wish I had known I was just being a cultural maurader, so I could have stopped myself from the fun of wearing it, from the fun of people going "hey, my cousin was FFA," from the blue courdroy buzz it gave me.
I guess I'm saying that your piece was about the wrong thing. Why the need? Why the need to have to go around knocking the wind out of everyone? That's the Willamsburg/Austin/No Ho thing to do. Not the wearing of the Trucker Hat, but the being faux angry at the proliferation of the Trukcer Hat. To be above the Trucker Hat. I agree with Stephen King, why is everyone so insecure in New York about their intelligence? Why does everyone in Brooklyn have to remind you of how they've seen it all before, to recognize a trend, discover it's fiber, and then bray loudly that it's over. Was it a personal victory for that NY Times to writer to declare the Trucker Hat over? Only to be snatched away by her friends who told her that they knew it months ago ("well, I tried to tell my editor in March, but he didn't even know they were in!"). You should make a New York board game outta it. "Your this is just a that, with a little bit of Wittgenstein thrown in." Irony is dead, Rock is dead, Rock is so over it's kewl, Kewl is not cool, I like music without words, your retro is retro. The competiveness is like a grad school gone mad, with each person trying to dissect the others art before it might affect him. Like a hundred annoying patron's in the movie line explaining why we really shouldn't like this, but you MUST listen to Lenny Bruce, because he was REALLY funny. I assure that somewhere, back then, was someone dissecting how Lenny Bruce was just blah, blah, blah. Before he created the Sopranos, David Chase wrote the greatest Rockford Files episode about the LA restaurant which goes from humble to popular, back to humble again. I'll be wearing my Trucker hat when the storm passes, and sadly, you'll be out trying to slay the next art/music/fashion dragon. Blah to yawl.
Posted by: Real Trucker at August 21, 2003 03:30 AMI believe that the first celeb to wear one was Benicio Del Toro. Before Traffic, even, he used to wear them to be funny. Stuff like Montana Donkey Supply. The bigger and uglier the better. He used to go out in public like that, but not anymore.
Posted by: Ted Trucker at August 21, 2003 07:36 PMI started wearing a trucker hat back in 1996 or 1997. Can;t remember which. I was going to school in Kansas and there was a John Deere store nearby and a friend of mine got one and I took it from him. It was rare for me to find a hat that fit my head so well so he let me have it. And I found out that trucker hats are super comfy! the mesh really lets the head breathe and they certainly look better than any other kind of baseball-type hat, I think. Now that I'm thinking about it, I might just ride this trucker hat thing all the way until they come back into style again...
Posted by: Luka Yovetich at August 25, 2003 07:24 AMits. a. beanie. with. a. brim. nnnkay?
Posted by: ccm at September 19, 2003 08:15 PM