THAT hat

Unless you have spent the last ten days living in Mongolia in a yurt with no wifi, you must have heard about THAT hat which Pharrell wore during the past Grammy awards. It is all over the blogosphere and it even has its own Twitter account. Genius styling moment, he rocked that hat.

As soon as I saw that he was wearing the iconic Malcolm McLaren Buffalo Gals hat, or at least, a re- edition of it by Vivienne Westwood, I nearly fell off the sofa. Apparently  during and after the Grammy’s the shop’s website crashed and the hat sold out in 12 hours .

The 1984 Malcolm McLaren video Buffalo Gals was  a revelation to me. Through it I discovered underground hip hop, scratching and world music and then Malcolm’s Buffalo tribe and fashion movement went on to influence the Ray Petri Buffalo esthetics that my artist Tony Viramontes was part of when he was shooting for ID, The Face and Arena in the mid 80’s. Get the story here.

I like to see how underground subculture  movements connect and intertwine with each other and Malcolm was at the origin of so many of these; from punk to Buffalo and on to vogueing, to mention but a few that were so present in my life and that of the artists I work with. I was also very fortunate to meet Malcolm in 1989 and go on to work with him and collaborate on many projects for nearly two decades.

Anyway, back to the fabulous hat that Malcolm designed,wore and made famous in that video ….see below. And for the complete story of  the hat go to this great article by Dazed And Confused here

And now the plot thickens: yesterday I was visiting my buddies Shawn and Paula Stussy and checking out the new S Double Studio collection which I will write about soon because it is so perfect, and what do I see in his studio? THAT hat! The real deal, from the shop World’s End circa 1986….check out Shawn’s take on it here .

Pharrell …….eat your heart out  in a nice way because I am a big fan )

pix courtesy of Shawn and Paula Stussy