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The "Hemingway's Cap," purported to be styled after the long-billed fishing caps the author Ernest Hemingway wears in a few photos from the 1930s to the 1950s, is still available from the J. Peterman Company web site and catalog (or, as Peterman's describes it, the "Owner's Manual").

Here's a J. Peterman link, current as of May 2016: J. PETERMAN COMPANY WEB SITE

Here's a link to an image of Hemingway wearing a cloth cap with a long, dark bill while fishing in Bimini in the mid-1930s.

A discussion topic on The Fedora Lounge website from 2006 indicates that the 2006 retail price for the Hemingway's Cap was $39.00, with an occasionally discounted price of $34.00. Ten years later, in 2016, the price is $59.00, although subscribers to the J. Peterman email list are sometimes offered short-term "percent off" coupons, generally 20%.

Early posts in this topic also describe the long bill of this cap as having been covered in soft deerskin. The current Owner's Manual listing indicates calfskin leather.

I recently purchased a J. Peterman "Hemingway's Cap." Yes, I paid fifty bucks for a baseball cap. Yes, I'm a frivolous moron sometimes. At least I had a "21% off" coupon, so actually I only paid $47.00 for a baseball cap. Plus shipping. So yeah, fifty bucks.

I've wanted one. For a long time. Practically forever, it seems. Or at least, ever since I first saw this cap and read the likely spurious but nevertheless compellingly entertaining description in a Peterman catalog years and years ago. But I could never justify the cost. And, quite frankly, I still can't justify the cost. I mean, it's a cotton baseball cap. Light tan in color. With a long, dark bill. There's no way it's worth fifty bucks.

Here's what you get for your $59.00: it's an "old school" low-crowned baseball-style cap made of a lightweight cotton canvas material. The crown consists of six wedge-shaped panels. Each panel sports a brass ventilation grommet in the middle. The back of the cap has elastic sewn into the hem of the fabric to keep it snug. No plastic adjustment band. No Velcro. No open back with a stretchy bit tacked in. Elastic, sewn into the hem. The hat is available in three sizes, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. Thus, it is "sized" to an extent, rather than merely being "adjustable" or "one size fits all."

I generally wear a 7-5/8 or 61 in "sized" hats. I purchased an Extra Large, and it fits well. You'd think that, what with all that space in my head for brains, I'd know better than to spend fifty bucks on a baseball cap.

A tag sewn inside the cap displays the J. Peterman logo and indicates the body of the cap is Made in Sri Lanka of 100% cotton.

The bill is, on my example, 4-7/8 inches long from the front edge to the seam where it attaches to the cotton body. The bill is, indeed, covered in leather. The leather is very smooth, almost shiny. In fact, it almost looks like vinyl. But a close examination of the inside of the hat where the brim attaches reveals that the brim covering is actual leather, as the "non-shiny" side of the hide is visible at the seams. The brim feels as though the core inside the leather is... cardboard. I don't know. What are the brims of baseball caps (or, I shudder at the term: "trucker's caps") usually made of? This one feels like thin cardboard. When the hat arrived the brim was completely flat. I have been gently attempting to give the brim a curve without inadvertently creasing it.

I suppose one way to justify having purchased this hat is that this is the first baseball-style cap I have ever owned. Even as a kid, I never had a baseball hat. So if you add up all the five and ten and fifteen dollar baseball hats and trucker's caps I haven't purchased over the years... okay, yeah, it's a stretch, I know.

Anyway:

PROS:

*Cotton body (not nylon or other new-fangled synthetic blend)

*Six-panel, low-profile, rounded crown construction

*Brass (probably plated) ventilation grommets, one in each panel

*1930s "fishing hat" style

*Long, nearly five inch, leather-covered "duck bill" brim

*Available in a range of three "sizes" rather than one-size-fits-all

*Elastic sewn into the hem; no Velcro or plastic size adjustment band

*No external sports team or "Big Johnson" novelty logos

*Made someplace other than China

CONS:

*Sixty bucks for a baseball hat: that's a "con" in more than one sense of the word!

*Fifty bucks for a baseball hat even with a discount coupon

Does anybody else own one of these? Or rather, will anybody else admit to having shelled out fifty bucks for a semi-fictionalized reproduction of a type of fisherman's cap a famous author might once have worn?

(Detail: elastic hem)

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Posted to FlickrSeptember 4, 2012 at 7.21AM

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