Tuesday, September 02, 2014

New Era 59fifty





The New Era baseball cap...
It used to be an unchanged quality aspect of world sport... while uniforms were contracted to different companies the cap was 'the' cap of US baseball...
In recent times the 59fifty and the 9fifty [so called snapback] have made a fashion comeback in flouro colours, superhero themed, with unbent peaks etc etc...
Over recent decades it's been fun to watch the African Americans 'mess with' the hat and I'm sure sit back and laugh at the rest of the west seeking to copy... worn backwards, flat peak, perched just on top of your head, with a bandana underneath....
I picture small cliques in neighbourhoods wondering how they can next have a laugh... in the last ten years the quality of the sewing and style has changed a little, but they still hang together pretty well... I wear them because of the teams, not the themes, because of the sport, not the music... Did you know that the most recent popularity can be sourced back to Spike Lee.
To watch the NY Yankees in the 1992 World Series Baseball he asked New Era to make a bright red version [instead of the navy]... suddenly wearing this peaked cap became a fashion item away from the stadium and still today there are whole pop up stores and sports store sections devoted to hundreds of variations of this one basic cap... meanwhile the developing world still struggles for clean drinking water, tribal and religious groups bomb each other and we are in the grip of a new wave of conflict... it's important to have a hobby though and I gave up stamp collecting in favour of hats n t-shirts a long time ago... I sold lots of my caps at a market a few years ago so others could share in their story.... I'll have to do that again soon!!

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