12. Hats to travel with (or bring home)

Let the world go to your head with touristy Mexican sombreros, practical British wool beanies, and other worldly lids.

Me (far left) and some amigas trying on sombreros in San Antonio’s Market Square circa the late 1990s.

Tourists in bedazzled Mexican sombreros crowd the boarding area of most flights out of San Antonio, Texas. In massive-brimmed, sequined velvet hats—usually worn with shorts or sweats—the travelers resemble tequila commercial extras who have forgotten their mariachi suits and guitars. 

As a kid, I’d scoff at these gringos whenever my family got on a Southwest flight out of my hometown. Their muy grande hats seemed destined for dustbins from Duluth to Denver, silly mementos snatched up after downing one too many margaritas near the Alamo. 

“Are they going to wear those to their jobs, or maybe to do a hat dance on the plane?” I’d joke to my mother before slouching down the plane jetway, an insufferably insecure 14-year-old in a San Antonio Spurs baseball cap. 

“Hats make a great souvenir, particularly if they’re important in the culture of a place,” says Anna Fuhrman, owner of hat shop Proper Topper.

I hadn’t gone enough places enough times to understand that eventually, we all become that scourge of teens everywhere: The Person Who Buys a Hat on Vacation. This happens when you neglect to pack gear to combat the Sicilian sun/Seattle rain/Canadian cold, or if you fall hard for local finery: shell-studded gnawa hats in Morocco, colorful wool sauna hats in Helsinki—just soak them in water to stay cooler in the steam room.

Straw hats were for sale on Isla de Mujeres, Mexico, in 2021.

Hats can instantly transform or transport anyone who wears them. (Just think how many Halloween costumes get their power from a sultan’s turban or Cleopatra’s headdress.) “If I buy this cowboy hat in Santa Fe, then I’ll finally try line dancing!” or “This Parisian beret will help me improve my French accent.”

The impulse to transport your holiday self back to reality may supersede practicality. (For example, the ginormous straw caballero hat I bought in a Mexican border town years ago, now collecting dust in my attic instead of compliments at fiestas.)

But still, “hats make a great souvenir, particularly if they’re important in the culture of a place,” says Anna Fuhrman, the owner of Washington, D.C. hat and gift emporium Proper Topper. “There are little felt ones in the ‘stans’ or crown-like ones from Africa.”

Fuhrman decorates her home with hats perched on candlesticks or hung on the wall: a Scottish Glengarry cap trimmed in plaid, a round kufi from West Africa embellished with cowry shells and turquoise.

An African kufi hat hangs on the wall in Proper Topper owner Anna Fuhrman's home; a beaded Yoruba crown from Nigeria is displayed in my living room.

I too, have returned from trips with magic hats, as much objets d’art as head warmers. I have a trucker cap from Mexico embroidered with mythical otomi animals and a beaded Yoruba ade crown. The latter, a cone-shaped Nigerian headdress I bundled back from Johannesburg, decorates my living room, never worn, but often an ice breaker at parties.

Hats for your next trip

One hat strategy for voyagers? Acquire whatever headgear you need when you arrive at your destination: a rakish Colombian vueltiao (see video below) in sunny, seaside Cartagena, a ski cap knitted with a blazing red Norwegian flag in Bergen, where fjord-going tourists (me included) generally encounter frigid weather, even in summer.

Or come prepared. “I always bring a few hats—straw for somewhere sunny, a fleece-lined beanie when I visit my daughter at college in Scotland,” Fuhrman says. “But I focus on crushable, packable styles for travel, since you don’t want to be that person with the enormous hat in the airline overhead bin, blocking other people’s stuff.”

Options in Fuhrman’s store and web shop include a camping or safari-ready sunhat, a yellow, wide-brimmed rain hat, or, for men, tweed driving caps ideal for fall rides in rented convertibles or strolls around European capitals.

Hats for rain and cold on sale at Proper Topper in Washington, D.C.

My well-traveled Californian friend Randy Steward is also a hat connoisseur. “My wife Cathy and I have wool fedora-style hats from Yellow 108 that we’ve been wearing on trips to places like Yosemite and wine tasting expeditions to Paso Robles or Santa Ynez along the Central Coast,” he says. “We’re both mindful of the sun, plus wearing a hat keeps you warmer.”

Yellow 108 hats come in wool and straw and offer loads of sun protection.

If I’m headed someplace sun-soaked, I usually bring a squishable Eric Javits hat. (The brand’s ladylike, synthetic straw or wool hats are pricey, but can often be found at a discount via Nordstrom Rack or gently used on TheRealReal—see this, this or this.)

An Eric Javits straw fedora in the Sahara Desert near Aswan, Egypt.

For rain or cold, brands based in chillier, wetter lands excel at warming headgear. I’m eyeballing UK-made wool beanies by Mars Knitwear or mohair bucket hats from Sweden’s COS to face winter here in Washington, D.C. and in New York City (where I’m heading come January). Denmark’s aptly named Rains crafts both precip-fighting coats and brimmed water-resistant hats. And I just nabbed this faux black-patent cloché from Dutch brand Bronte hats, which will hopefully arrive before I fly to Istanbul for a conference this Wednesday.

Mars Knitwear produces all of its products in England, including this cozy tweed beanie.

No matter where you’re traveling, the wealth of interesting hats makes it easy to let the world go to your head, to top your skull with something both useful and distinctly of a given place. “Hats make a statement all on their own,” Fuhrman says. “They speak about where they’re from, and start conversations wherever they go.”