Flat Caps, Bucket Hats and Baseball Caps

Five hats, four shapes, and one thing that makes this the easiest category in the catalog to buy for someone else: none of them has a size. They come in colours rather than in S, M and L, which removes the single hardest part of buying clothing as a gift.

What they do have is shape, and shape on a head is more consequential than on any other garment. Below: what each silhouette actually looks like worn, including one whose name does not quite match its form.

Four Shapes and What They Do on a Head

Flat cap. Low, flat-topped, short stiffened brim, the shape that reads as classic without being costume. The Summer Flat Cap is the lightweight version, cut in a breathable fabric for warm weather rather than the wool the shape is usually associated with.

Newsboy. The fuller, rounder cousin of a flat cap, made of panels seamed together to a button at the crown, so it sits with more volume above the ear. This is what the Striped Flat Cap actually is, an eight-panel newsboy shape, despite the name. Worth knowing before it arrives, because it is a noticeably rounder look on the head than a true flat cap.

Baseball cap. Curved brim, structured front, adjustable at the back. The Semender Cap is the summer version in a lightweight fabric, and the Embroidered Corduroy Cap is the same silhouette in corduroy, which turns a casual shape into an autumn one.

Bucket hat. Downward-sloping all-round brim, unstructured, folds into a bag. The Embroidered Bucket Hat is 100% cotton and comes in six colours, the widest range here.

The Five Compared

All five are textile rather than leather, and none carries a size, only colour.

Which Shape Suits Which Face

The usual advice about face shapes is mostly noise, but two rules genuinely hold.

Balance the volume. A newsboy adds height and roundness above the ear, which suits a longer or narrower face and overwhelms a rounder one. A flat cap does the opposite: low and close, so it lengthens rather than widens.

Match the brim to the occasion, not the outfit. A curved baseball brim reads casual regardless of what it is made from, which is why the corduroy version is the interesting one: same casual silhouette, but the fabric moves it into autumn and lets it sit next to a heavy knit rather than a t-shirt.

The bucket hat is the outlier, because it is the only one here that is genuinely about function first. An all-round brim shades the back of the neck and the ears, which no cap does, and it folds flat into a bag rather than needing to keep its shape.

Season, and the Corduroy Exception

Four of these are summer pieces: light fabrics, breathable, made for sun rather than cold. The corduroy cap is the one that is not.

Corduroy's ribbed pile traps air, which makes it noticeably warmer than a cotton twill cap of the same shape, and it pairs with the rest of the autumn range in a way the summer caps do not. If you want one cap that works from September through February, that is the one.

The corduroy pants and the oversize corduroy shirt use the same fabric family, so the three read as a deliberate set rather than a coincidence. They are in pants and shorts and shirts.

Care for Hats

Hats are the garment people most often ruin in a washing machine, and the rules are simple.

Do not machine wash a structured cap. A baseball cap or a flat cap has a stiffened front panel or brim, and a machine collapses it permanently. Spot clean with a damp cloth and mild soap instead.

The bucket hat is the exception, being unstructured cotton, but even then wash cool and reshape it damp rather than tumbling it dry.

Never leave a hat in a hot car. Heat plus the shape of a dashboard is how a cap ends up permanently warped.

Store caps stacked or on a shelf, not crushed at the bottom of a bag, unless it is the bucket hat, which is the only one here designed to be packed flat.

Everything here is covered for life against manufacturing defects, with repairs covered for life as well.

Hats as Gifts

This is the most gift-friendly group in the clothing range, for the reason at the top of this page: no sizing. A cap in a colour you know someone wears is a safe gift in a way a shirt never is.

Two practical suggestions. The bucket hat has six colours, the widest choice here, which makes it the easiest to match to someone's wardrobe. And the corduroy cap is the one that reads as a considered choice rather than a generic cap, because the fabric is unusual in that shape.

Note that name debossing applies to leather pieces rather than textiles, so hats cannot be personalized. If you want a personalized gift in this price range, a leather keychain takes free engraving and arrives in its own gift box. The rest of the leather range is in leather accessories.