I recently asked a fellow blogger, Paul the Irrelephant, to justify his stylistic existence. In particular, I wanted him to explain his beret and his walrus-ian facial hair after he wrote a post comparing his look to the beret-sporting, walrus-moustache-having look of Jamie Hyneman, co-host of Mythbusters, that show on the Discovery Channel where they build a lot of shit and blow a lot of shit up (oh wait, that’s every show on the Discovery Channel, which, now that I think about is, is pretty interesting. The channel’s like an ode to blowing up/building shit fantasies of boyhood/adolescence).
Anyway, Paul wrote me back, and I liked his response enough to offer it up as the beginnings of a definition for Male Archetype #48: The Modern Eccentric Gentleman, Usually Southern, Often of Ambiguous Sexuality. Paul writes:
The beret is a little misleading, honestly. It’s actually a faux-Kangol Ivy cap, in a sort of thick felted material so that it holds its shape. I own and wear a number of hats, and the whys and wherefores of THAT is a very long thing indeed. Perhaps a blog-worthy topic. The short form is that I have several Kangols and faux-Kangols in that same New York 30’s newsboy style. I like them for their comfort, but primarily as a statement AGAINST hats. I live in the Deep South, and as such the only acceptable cap to wear is a meshback, the generic trucker/ag company/John Deere cap, or if you’re more yuppy, a solid cloth team cap, LSU being the preferred team. Jamie [Hyneman, not Berger]–I can’t speak for him, but his facial hair and hat often give me the impression of a creative, unique guy, who by his business and tv show needs to fit into the mold but not toooo closely, if you follow me. He’s unique, while still being a businessman, a father, an inventor of machines.
So me, being a go-against-the-stream sort of guy, I wear the ivy-cap style most often because it’s soft, lets the air flow through (a dire necessity in the near-tropical south,) and is easy enough to tip to a lady. Which I do, not always, but when, like ‘Sassafras,’ [semi-private dancer of Jamie Berger, not Hyneman] I am favoured with a smile or a kind gesture from a stranger or a friend. I own a pair of very nice fedoras which I most often wear when I dress up, and wear as the occasion calls for it a derby in classic black or a big grey Mad Hatter-style grey top hat. And yes, before you ask, I even have a sun hat, a battered old straw Panama Beach kind of thing I bought at Target for about $5. It keeps the sun off my close-shaved hair and my skin, because we’re prone to skin cancer on my Dad’s side. I love the outdoors, and am no fool.
So. Part of the reason is protection. Part of it is that I still feel that herd instinct, the need to blend in with the group, but I don’t want to do so wholeheartedly; so deeply do I feel it that I go quite in the other direction–the stylish hat. Time was when all men wore hats, all the time. I like the idea. I like to be able to use it as a distraction, as a flirtation tool, as a genuine outer expression of my inner need to be "A Gentleman,’ in the sense of "A Gentle Man," and hats do that for me, as does the facial hair–it sets me apart from others, even other facial hair wearers. It says "Not only do I dare to be hirsute, an obvious snub of today’s accepted clean-cheeked handsome guy, I also dare to be very different in the way I wear my beard." For fourteen years after I got out of high school I wore my hair long, tumbling down my back in the big loose waves that my mother’s family genetics gave me. I honestly got tired of it because of the work involved, and once I went to the high-and-tight I knew I couldn’t go back, due simply to ease of use. The beard, however, has stayed on, unchanged from 1985 until two months ago, when I decided to change a bit.
So! Just the highlights, but I hope it gives you something to gnaw on. A need to be different while still fitting in, loosely. A desire for what I seem to think of as "a simpler time," though I’m not so foolish as to believe that the 30’s were any better than now. And a way to be eccentric, an anachronism, in a society that is increasingly pap-fed, disposable, and thoughtless. I drive a truck that is some 37 years old, without power steering or air conditioner or power brakes simply because it’s more difficult, more in touch with what I’m doing (operating a very heavy, very dangerous machine.) I use a fountain pen because they’re NOT disposable, in fact, they’re quite the opposite–capable of being an heirloom. I wear hats because it puts me in touch with what I feel Life has most lost contact with — a concrete, absolute sense of style.
I like this style for a number of reasons. It has a regional flavor (the Mythbusters guy happens to be from Michigan, but there’s little doubt that the style points towards the south). It has a tradition (though at this point it’s unlikely that it was handed down, from fathers to sons, from the old days to the men who are sporting it today). And it’s masculine while at the same time having a decorativeness that, these days, men tend to be uncomfortable displaying.
I also, it should be noted, love the phrase "high-and-tight" for the hairstyle Paul’s got, though I dislike the actual style on most men.
