Teeny Weeny Beanies
Micro hats’ military and marine origins have since moved onto everyone from football pundit Ian Wright to Tyler, the Creator. But do they keep you warm?
Most of us in the UK resorted to our usual array of puffer jackets and woolly hats as an arctic blast hit the country this week. Others dug out something a little more surprising from their accessories arsenal: a micro beanie.
These bijou beanie are worn high up on the forehead with deliberately rolled up, so as to leave their ears open to the breeze. They are named fisherman or watch caps, with origins in maritime and military settings – rolled up to avoid interruption of rules of hearing – where they were originally worn. Worn on the high seas they are, but nowadays creative types wear the hats in offices and coffee shops across London to Lancaster.
‘Typically I wear mine fairly flat or horizontal,’ said Johnson, a creative director in London who began wearing micro beanies as a teenager. “It gives you a nice balance and silhouette. “Really it’s just their ears that you see exposed for the fact that they’ve been rolled up so many times,” they continue.
On paper, and particularly in a cold snap, the practice, which this paper dubs ‘helixing’ (it exposes an area of the ear known as the helix) seems pointless. Yet McCabe and others say that with most of the head covered, the micro beanie still keeps them warm.
Micro beanies, unsurprisingly have become an object of ridicule and get memed every now and then. Numerous comments read: instant ick. Even the Jimmy Fallon skit ‘Teenie weenie beanies’ was read about Paul Rudd! Yet if you can guess which taunts they hurl each game, the taunting has only made them more appealing. In the same way that placing a micro beanie on your head has become a social style signifier, as with Perello olives or Daunt Book tote bags, placing a micro beanie on your head says a lot more than that you just had a bad hair day.
Micro beanies have now gone mainstream and the good news is they are now. Former Footballer Ian Wright helped champion the headgear this week when he added two versions to his debut hat collection for M&S. In the lookbook, the Arsenal legend models the beanie, which come pre rolled, and they’re said to ‘exude understated cool’. Jacques Cousteau, Marvin Gaye, Bill Murray, Tyler, the Creator and others are other micro-beanie influencers.
McCabe gets his vintage from the Paris store Brut Clothing. He has “a beautiful handmade one from Anthony Peto” and one from ‘the kids’ section of Arket.’ He tends to roll his own because it requires fewer rolls to get the perfect head to ear ratio: “One big roll or two small ones”.
It’s been very popular in menswear – nearly every look on the GmbH and Hermès runways this season was topped off with a micro beanie – but it’s yet to gain traction in womenswear. Women’s often longer hair styles get in the way, according to digital creator Natasha Muchura. She didn’t even start experimenting with beanies until she got a buzzcut. This was something I would have never thought of wearing if I had hair ’cause I would never have been able to get the look I wanted, says Muchura. For once, having any hair would distract from it. Without,” it just falls better.
