“You have to know how to wear a hat,” Bernard Shannon said.
Shannon, owner of Bernard’s Wear at 9017 S. Commercial Ave., was wearing a beige applejack cap angled over his left eyebrow. He moved past the racks of fedoras, bowlers and newsboy caps crowding his small hat shop to point to a sign by the cash register with the company’s motto: “To wear a hat you must possess Hattitude.”
“Always cock it,” Shannon, 62, explained in his gravely baritone, placing a black wool fedora on a visitor to demonstrate. “If it’s not cocked, it means you’re just learning.” He gestured to celebrity posters that share the shop’s walls with hundreds of snapshots of customers trying on hats.
“You see Al Capone? Cocked. You see Steve Harvey? Cocked. Billy Dee Williams: Cocked. Frank Sinatra: Cocked.”
Shannon, a master of “hattitude,” has been preaching the gospel of dapper dressing since he opened his shop 12 years ago. At the time, the classic head wear he loves was not in fashion. His friends thought he was crazy for leaving his graphic design job to bet on hats.
“I always knew that they would make a comeback,” said Shannon, who sells men’s and women’s and a few kids’ caps, at an average price of about $100.
The comeback of hats is one reason Shannon’s shop survived a bruising recession that left discretionary items, like hats, low on many shoppers’ priority lists.
Hat industry revenue in the U.S. fell almost 5 percent in 2009, when consumer confidence crashed as per capita disposable income declined for the first time since 1991, according to a report from market research firm IBISWorld.
Hat sales have been slowly rebounding along with the economy, expected to grow 4.1 percent this year to total $2.1 billion. The high demand for hats among young adults, which is likely to keep growing as more enter the workforce, “has largely offset recessionary declines,” the report said.
Though baseball caps command the majority of the market, over the past five years styles such as fedoras have enjoyed renewed demand among men and women, driven largely by celebrity-inspired fashion trends, the IBISWorld report said.
As fashion in general embraces the styles and tastes of yesteryear — and men, the biggest hat consumers, in particular are increasingly paying attention to personal style — classic hats like flat caps, porkpies and cloches are back en vogue.
“People are nostalgic for classic, well-made, and handcrafted goods that have a story,” said Ben Goorin, head of the San Francisco-based Goorin Bros. hat company, which his great-grandfather founded in 1895. Goorin has opened 32 neighborhood hat shops over the past eight years, including two in Chicago, to invite guests to step back in time to when community was king.
“Wearing hats is more acceptable as people have figured out how to incorporate them into their common wardrobes,” Goorin said.
Shannon said the rising popularity of classic hats helped tremendously during the tough years of the recession, when sales declined but stayed steady enough to keep the doors open.
“These are feel-good items,” Shannon said. “You may not be able to afford a house or a car, but everyone needs something to make them feel good.”
Shannon discovered the feel-good power of hats at 12 years old, when his father bought him his first hat, a straw fedora, for his 8th grade graduation.
“My dad said, ‘You’re a man now,’ and I believed him,” Shannon said. Hats, to Shannon, represent “a boy stepping into manhood.”
His customer base likes dressing up. The full name of the shop is Bernard’s Wear: The Steppers Store, because it caters to people in search of swank attire for stepping, a dance style that is “kind of an African-American version of ballroom dancing,” Shannon said.
In addition, Bernard’s Wear holds semiannual hat parties that draw up to 1,000 people dressed to the nines. There is a hat contest, the winners of which get a gift certificate to Bernard’s.
“There’s a method to my madness,” chuckled Shannon, who started the parties in 2007 to drum up business. (The next hat party, for adults over 35, is Nov. 15 at 11901 S. Loomis Ave.)
Increasingly, though, Shannon said he is seeing younger, more casual dressers interested in his merchandise, particularly his hats, as they strive to dress more uniquely and sharply.
“People are finally getting it,” said Shannon, who also sells premium wool suit jackets and silk bow ties and ascots.
The young hat adopters for the most part have been opting for pub caps and fedoras with a “stingy brim,” which is a brim less than 11/2 inches wide. Applejacks, which are the hats with a round body and button on top, never go out of style, he added.
But Shannon said he thinks wider brims, preferred by older men because they block the sun’s rays, could soon take off. He noted the paparazzi photos of the striking white wide-brim hat that Amal Alamuddin, George Clooney’s new wife, wore during their wedding weekend in Venice.
“When you start to elevate your game, you go with a wide-brim hat,” Shannon said.
Shannon, who custom designs, makes, cleans and re-blocks hats in the basement of his shop, sells a varied selection of hats — premium brands such as Stetson, Dobbs, Selentino and Borsalino, as well as some less-expensive hats — to appeal to varying income levels.
His hat prices start at $29.99 and go up — way up.
“Have you ever seen a $500 hat?” Shannon said. He disappeared behind a wall and reappeared holding a royal blue Borsalino men’s fedora made of shaved beaver fur, the priciest hat in the store.
“When the light hits it, it gets that sheen, you know?” Shannon said.
Bernard’s Wear stands out on a street lined with vacant storefronts and dollar stores. When business is slow, Shannon props his right foot on the window ledge and watches the neighborhood through barred windows, waving at neighbors as they pass.
“It’s a relationship with the community,” Shannon said. “They look out for me.”
Still, he keeps the door locked during opening hours, because, he said, “I don’t like to be surprised.”
Shannon, who dreams of opening a second location downtown, said people come from throughout the country to visit his hat shop, drawn not just by the quality merchandise but by the personal styling he and his business partner, Barron Brown, offer to whoever walks through the door.
“Nobody has good customer service anymore because it’s all do-it-yourself,” he said. “That’s what makes me different from the rest of them. I spend time with my customers.”
That, and hattitude. A T-shirt in the storefront window bears another of Shannon’s slogans.
“All men are created equal,” it says, “until they get dressed.”
