MILITARY MATE - ON TREND FALL 2017

As we all know the “modern sailor” look as been very big for the past 2 years and for fall 17 we see it blend into Military Mate trend for ladies. We are also seeing it in menswear but more on that in a later blog posting.

This is really an ongoing trend at Scala and it is important to think gender neutral as you will find many of these styles in the men's catalogs.

 I would definitely be showing our Aegean caps to complement this trend.

AEGEAN AEG100-BLK

Other classic Scala caps that would work in shape and color (olive, camel, charcoal) are BOILED WOOLS; 

BOILED WOOL CADET LW266-asst-olive

PEAKED BERET LW242-ASST-CAMEL

MILITARY INSPIRED CAP LW614-ASST-OLIVE

MILITARY CHAINED CAP LW663-asst-charcoal

LW497-OLIVE

Greens in all shades are trending as accent colors, so also show classic best sellers LW399-OLIVE and WALNUT, LW497-OLIVE.

ANNUAL BEST SELLER BOILED WOOL LW399-WALNUT

YELLOW - IN VOGUE

If a season was described by a color, than SPRINGTIME would definitely be yellow. The delicate yellow daffodils shyly poking their yellow heads out of the hard winter soil and the forsythia exploding in joyous yellow, ever before it even sends a delicate green leaf out.
Even President Trump's silken yellow mane seems to say "joy to the world".

Greenery may be the Pantone color of the year but YELLOW is just so mellow!

British vogue Jan 2017 by Julia Hobbs

At Dorfman Pacific we are, as always on trend, offering a range of shading from banana to yellow and pumpkin.Yellow hats are not the easiest color to wear, so we have used it sparingly in our assortments. Under our SCALA and TROPICAL TREND labels you will find.

LC61-fash-yellow

V16-ASST-YELLOW. NO HEADACHE VISOR

CLASSIC LC399-BANANA

LC761-ASST-BANANA

CLASSIC BEACH DRIFTER LS110-ASST-YELLOW

 In our Brooklyn hat company division, look for subtle yellow on many of the trims.

BKN1519-Nat

So mellow out in a great hat, summer is just around the corner.

CHAPEAX DE PARIS - C'EST TENDANCE

Unlike Tokyo's plain and simple hats, Paris had a hat for all heads this winter.

At ESPACE KILLIWATCH, one of my favorite "trend" stores in Paris, the look was in keeping with Tokyo's plain and simple look. Killywatch is an amazing store with a melange of vintage, second hand and new items layered in, #recycled and #upcycled, all of which are beautifully curated and merchandised.

STETSON hats were featured front and center, with a nice collection of blocked wool felt and well as  classic wool ivy like STW236 which is available in the US from Dorfman Pacific.
N. B.  8/4 caps were much more on display over ivy caps.

The main window featured an off white trail hat, which we had seen in abundance in Tokyo last month.

The trail hat was by far the most highlighted silhouette in the store, many had the brixton label.

We have this silhouette covered in Callanan and other dorfman pacific brands for fall 2017.

callanan trail hat LV390-ASST

The most exciting hat I saw was a "BLAST FROM THE PAST". Dorfman Pacific's classic melton beanie style 167M-BLK. Here it had been given a fresh makeover with an adjustable "baseball cap open back". It was offered in a selection of tweeds that looked great and in addition colors for the ladies. Sometimes, something is so out of fashion that it is back in fashion. This hat was 125 euro!
Maybe its time to bring the stevedore cap back!

STEVEDORE CAPS

Next stop was the new NATURE ET DECOUVERTE store in the Marais. It's a gorgeous 2 level store with a glassed in courtyard.

Nature et Découverte always featured a hat tree of safari hats as a center piece of their outdoor look. Again STETSON was the hat of choice here.

STETSON weathered cotton, leather and cloth hats are available from Dorfman Pacific US.
Interestingly the dorfman pacific version of the tritone leather trim is on close out for $19.99, while supplies last. STYLE DF160-ASST.

BHV's HOMME store, always has great accessories and a nice courtyard to grab a coffee.

On this visit, the hat department had shrunk and had lost it center stage location. Nevertheless, it was still well curated. STETSON and Flèche were the predominant hats here.

BHV hat department display

Nice selection of quality wool felt hats with striped ribbon, contrast bows and classic leather lacing.

Nice contrast stitching detailing which is available in Callanan, gender neutral style LV318-asst.

flèche weather cotton ivy

I really liked the quilted cotton lining. It felt good on. I also liked the fun lining color. weather cotton can be so drab to merchandise.

I liked the twill under brim on this STETSON leather cap. Similar to style STW510 from stetson by Dorfman Pacific.

I have to admit that there was minimum correlation between what the stores were showing and what was being worn on the streets. It was absolutely freezing in Paris over new years weekend. The hat of choice for all sexes was the beanie, or as the french would say le bonnet. Having been forced to stand in an outdoor security at Gare du Nord for 2 hours, I was able to focus in on head wear more closely.

For men the top selling beanie brand was CARHARTT with thinsulate and the best selling color by far was LIGHT GREY. Maybe Dorfman Pacific needs to readjust their color packs!

For ladies it was a knit beanie with a real or faux pompon. We are on trend with this for fall 2017.

You say pompom and I say pompon. same/same. Pompon came from France to England in the 19th century and was misheard as pompom. Today they are equally used in English.
We have pompons and pompoms in scala ladies!!

SCALA ON TREND WITH POMPONS

LK183-ASST

LE FIN

PLAIN AND SIMPLE hats - ON TREND

On a recent design trip to China, we stopped off in Tokyo to do some trend shopping. Tokyo has been the hat capital of fashion for a number of years. Not only do Edokkos love to wear hats, they love to wear statement hats. Hats that yell, "look at me!". Hats with crazy shapes and crazier trims. Hats with amazing attention to details. Hats that put the K in kool!
Besides the CA4LA ( translates to head size) hat chain and the bespoke THE FAT HATTER, who is in reality a hefty fellow, you could find healthy hat departments in every major store.
For hat making videos from the stores check out eye_of_the_designer on instragram.

BESPOKE HAT COSTS

So we trolled the stores for 2 days, 9 hours per day and simply fond nothing that got our creative juices flowing. In Japan there has been a seismic shift away from hat wearing since our last visit there 2 years ago. 2" fedoras and under are non existent, with the exception of a few spotted on older solitary men.

This winter the hat of choice is a gender-neutral round or pinched crown, broad stiff brim, trimless or a very simple trim. This is a little concerning, as a hat without bells and whistles, can be a tad boring. Not that all hats have to be fancy, but it is nice to have a little trim for the Dapper Dans and ladies with hatitude to wear.

What was interesting and very important regarding these plain and simple hats was BRANDING!!
Although many of these hats looked like they should be cheap, and would be in H&M, Uniglo etc.,  they were far from it. As hatters, we were aghast to see medium quality wool felt hats at US$250 while nice quality fur felt was at US$150. Obviously the Japanese customer knows little regarding quality or does not care, but is willing to pay over inflated prices for the right BRAND.

Luckily at DORFMAN PACIFIC, we have solid brands to offer our customer Scala, Woolrich, Biltmore.

PLAIN AND SIMPLE HATS

PLAIN AND SIMPLE

HANG YOUR HAT UP

I really like the hat ring trim on this hat!

There was also a scarcity of cloth caps in Tokyo stores, but the Japanese are certainly in love with HARRIS TWEED. Forget about a discreet inside labels, they could not make the labels big enough.

HARRIS TWEED AS A BRAND

And as we have been seeing in the USA, flat peaked baseball caps continue to gain strength but are totally brand driven.

As we all know, the devil is in the details!

LADY GAGA'S HAT ATTACK

Lady GAGA, the one and only, the one we love, truly deserves the hat persona of the year 2016 award.

First, we had the big brim PINK hat, that gaga dons, on the cover of her album Joanne. She wore the same pink hat while Carpool Karaoke with James Corden and also wore it in the new add for apple music.
By the way, in case you are wondering who Joanne is, it is Gaga's middle name!

If that was not enough for the queen of fashion, she crowned it, at her performance at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show by wearing a hat worth ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Yes folks, that's a lot of zeros for a hat, $1,000,000. The large brim fedora was dripping in 45,000 SWAROVSKI crystals.

The hat took 300 hours to make and involved 10 craftspeople.
Both hats are NY miller extraordinaire Gladys Tamez.

NET WORTH - TREND FALL 2017

Net Worth

This air stewardess cap with netting is all about "girls just want to have fun".

This is not about the lady doing lunch or derby, it’s about looking flirty and coquette. Gucci inspired.

WOOL FELT LV385-ASST #CALLANANHATS