Beanie Hats: From Functional Outdoor Clothing to Urban, Street-Fashion Accessory

December 04, 2017

Recall back when beanies used to be thought of as functional outdoor headwear which means you primarily wore them after it was actually, very cold outside?

Here's how things have evolved. These days, beanies are worn inside, in the course of summer months and they sometimes accompany pricey suits worn by Hollywood actors. So what changed?

It appears that during the 80's beanies used to be perceived as sensible outside garments and nothing more. Massive hairstyles plus a great deal of hair spray were in vogue and consequently beanies (winter caps) did nothing but screw up all that hair.

Examples of big hair were the mullets (short and spikey on top, long in the back and shaved on the sides) worn by rockers, jocks and everyone in between at some point during the 80's. Likely inspired by the punk rock movement, the mullet enjoyed a good 10 year run. Although rare, some musicians (such as the Clash) wore hats in spite of their mullets but it was the exception rather than the rule.

Then the 90's emerged and extremely short hair (shaved heads) became popular. These kinds of hairstyles, influenced by hip-hop, skateboarding and the grunge musical trend simply just couldn't be messed up and as a result caps of all kinds, particularly beanies began to emerge as highly important fashion accessories.

In the 90's, generation Y arrived (the biggest youth demographic after the boomers) and they really catapulted historically verge life style industries specifically skate boarding to the mainstream and coupled with them, the beanie (a staple verge-fashion life-style fashion accessory).

Subsequently whole brands were being built from the ground up around this single product.

Premier fashion brands presently offer whole collections of expensive name brand beanies made in many various colours, patterns and fabrics. It's always surprising to see beanies worn over the course of hot weather rather than a baseball hat, however, this is becoming increasingly more typical.

So what is the future of this trend? As a matter of speculation, youth fashion looks like its going straight back into 80's style and along with this, the re-emergence of elaborate hair-styles. Like seen in the 80's, sophisticated hairstyles are usually bad for the hat trade as caps mess up hair.

Regardless, if ever the hat-wearing fashion does once-again go into decline, it would probably happen across a similar length (decades) in a similar way in which hat wearing has gone from obscurity towards mass-market acceptance amid the 80's to presently. Prospects for the beanie are in all probability good for the first part of this decade anyway.