In 1901, the Detroit Tigers They made a decision that was to have an unexpected effect on the way millions of people would dress at the end of the 20th century. That year, the baseball team for the first time incorporated an image to the cap with which its players took to the field: the figure of a tiger that now seems somewhat rudimentary and that, two years later, would be replaced by a letter d. in gothic typography that still survives today. Unwittingly, the Tigers had opened the door to a garment with an eminently practical purpose in the world of fashion.
Decades later, the baseball cap looks like it’s always been there. Diana of Wales wore it combined with a red puffer jacket when she tried to escape from the paparazzi cameras, and also Rudolph Giuliani multiplying in the streets of a New York attacked after 9/11. Donald Trump used it to carry the slogan (stolen from George Bush Sr., by the way) with which he won the US elections in 2016 and, this same year, Bad Bunny went up to collect a Grammy with one. It’s all at once: a versatile fashion accessory, an item to try (usually unsuccessfully) to go unnoticed, and a weapon of political propaganda. How did something that was devised to protect the head, and the eyes, from the sun get here?
the people’s crown
The standard baseball cap as we know it could have been very different. At the end of the 19th century, when this sport began to spread in the United States, different models were used, some more similar to a military flat cap. One of them was called pill box, similar to the women’s hats of the middle of the last century with the addition of the visor. However, the one that has come down to us prospered for its simplicity and adaptation to the players’ heads. In the 1940s rubber was added to the inside of the cap to make it more robust, while the visor grew in size. A process of adaptation to the environment that also made it more versatile and suitable for other contexts.
As baseball gained reach, the cap was leaving the stadiums to infiltrate the streets. The addition of the logo or emblem of the teams led to its sale outside the field of sport. Before team jerseys became the quintessential badge of club membership, the cap came forward as the first item of clothing. merchandising sports. In the fifties, the model that used 6 fabric panels sewn together was established, instead of the initial eight. The introduction of the model snapbackwith a cut at the back, ended up popularizing it with a wider audience.
“It is the crown of the people, it is completely egalitarian,” explained Mark Maidment, vice president of New Era, the brand that has the exclusive right to manufacture caps for the United States Baseball League (MLS) in an article for the competition’s website. . “You can put one on and feel great, whether you’re a taxi driver or going to perform in front of 200,000 people at Coachella.” Indeed, it is one of those rare accessories that unites all social strata. But how did you get it?
The cap’s rise to ubiquitousness is one of those journeys that begins with sports and reaches the masses through music. This is what Javier Munárriz believes, muna, founder of La Tienda de las Gorras, one of the first businesses focused on this accessory in Madrid. “I think the key is that it gets out to a wider audience through the music artists,” he explains. “In the eighties and nineties, it goes from being a sporting article or merchandising to a mass audience through, above all, artists from hip hop. That’s where fashion comes in.”
The current that goes from urban fashion to the catwalks and, by extension, to the clothing habits of the entire planet, had a clear precedent in the cap to the madness of sports shoes. In the late eighties, the looks quintessential New Yorker à la Jerry Seinfeld was crowned by a cap, the perfect instrument to protect yourself from the sun or the cold and an accessory that had a link with urban fashion. It was used by rap stars as well as by American politicians as a way of getting closer to the people, or by Michael J. Fox in the saga Return to the future.
At the same time, the cap was becoming an instrument of marketing perfect. In the same way that baseball teams used it to build relationships with their fans, brands found it a highly visible blank canvas on which to put their logos. “It was probably the garment that opened the ban on wearing brand logos. Even, right now among cap collectors, advertising caps have a lot of value, with logos from tobacco brands to tractor brands”, explains Muna.
style explosion
The 1990s saw the ultimate explosion of the baseball cap, championed by a generation of rap artists who made it an object of desire even beyond the knowledge of its origins. “I made the Yankees cap more famous than the Yankees ever could,” Jay-Z rapped on his song with Alicia Keys, Empire State of Mind. Indeed, the distinctive N and Y of the New York baseball team has become something of a logo of affordable luxury for those who can’t explain what a home run. “There are people who come to our store and think that it is a brand instead of a team,” confirms Muna.
This explosion of the cap as a basic of urban fashion also has another turning point, in which the New Era company discovered the almost unlimited possibilities that it allowed. “There was a pivotal moment when film director Spike Lee asked New Era to make him a red Yankees cap,” Muna relates. “Until then, official caps were made with the colors of each team. The Yankees caps, for example, were all navy blue. From that moment on, team caps began to be made in any color, it doesn’t matter if it’s not related to the team in question”.
Parallel to this boom in urban fashion, the baseball cap in its most austere version also became a basic garment for the elites, that 1% that has been portrayed in the series. succession and that has brought about the end of quiet luxury or quiet luxury. Recently, the Wall Street Journal dedicated an article to the models, apparently basic and actually exclusive, that the character of Kendall Roy had managed to exhaust in real life. An example, the cashmere cap from the Italian firm Loro Piana, which costs more than 625 dollars, just over 550 euros.
Once the cap was already accepted as a suitable complement to almost any style or social condition, the styles have diversified. The scene streetwear endorsed the five-panel model, while other options, such as the trucker (with grill on the back) were gaining ground. “Right now the public we have is much more heterogeneous”, confirms Muna in his experience in La tienda de las gorras, opened in 2003. “Before there was a much more specialized public, who came knowing what they were looking for. Now it is much more diverse, they come from kids to octogenarians”. He explains that the model trucker and the classic baseball, closed at the back, are some of the most popular. “In the nineties it was the most popular and now it is resurfacing. Cap fashion is also quite cyclical.” One more proof that the baseball cap has already become part of clothing beyond styles and classes.
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