By now, you’re an expert on cowboy hats. That’s if you’ve followed the series, ‘Story of the Cowboy Hat’ by yours truly, your favorite Colorado transplant and famous cowgirl wannabe. Catch up, partner, with previous parts of the cowboy hat story, about what it says, about how it is made, about shapes and styles, because THIS part of the cowboy hat story is the best yet!
Selfband
Every cowboy hat has a hatband. It is made from the same fur felt fabric as the hat. In fact, it comes from the brim or other section of the crown felt so that the color and texture of the hatband is exactly the same as the hat. It’s called a selfband. It affixes to the brim on the bottom of the crown with a small buckle, bolo, or concho to keep it from falling off.
Alternatives to the rather ordinary selfband are endless. The variety is infinite. They go from cheap to extraordinarily expensive. They speak of your station in life and say much about who’s under the hat.
Materials for early cowboy hatbands
Just as jewelry is personal adornment for gals, and ties are personal adornment for guys, hatbands are adornments for cowboy hats, which were worn by the earliest cowboys making their living on the range.
In those early days, materials available for adorning their hear gear included horse hair, snake skin, buffalo hide, cow hide, cow bones, and other animal leathers and suedes. You can see why they called them cowboys!
Such materials were cut and fitted to encircle the crown in flat strips, braids, twists, or woven bands. You could tell what a cowboy did with his time by looking at what his cowboy hatband was made of and how it was made. Because the cowboy himself usually made the band for his own hat.
Traders and Navajo Indians brought their materials to the cowboy hatband. From traders, cowboys could include feathers, coral, and shells in their hatbands. From the Navajo, they might use silver conchos, turquoise beads, and other bejeweled combinations in their hatbands.
Nowadays
These materials are still used today in modern-day cowboy hatbands. But with better production techniques for making cowboy hats better and faster also came newer materials for the hatband. A popular hatband for the ‘urban cowboy’ (a cowboy who doesn’t make his living on the range and no longer wears a tie) is gros grain ribbon. Relatively cheap and available, a ribbon is easy to affix to the cowboy hat of today and comes in all kinds of colors. Gros grain has just the right texture to stay in place around the crown.
Your hatband says a lot about you
What you put on your cowboy hat as the band says a lot about who and what you are today too. Nudie Cohn put rhinestones on his. Nudie Cohn was a tailor and the first person to put rhinestones on practically everything!
Starting with clothing–Western wear clothing in particular–Nudie Cohn made western wear popular among non-westerners. Hollywood stars wanting to ‘go Western’ had Nudie tailor their outfits, outfitting them with standard western design, fringe, leather, and lots and lots of rhinestones! So, it’s not surprising that Nudie Cohn was the first guy to put a wide band of rhinestones on his own cowboy hatband.
Jewelry for your hat
I’ve seen hatbands made of tiny beads patterned with colors in a flat band. I’ve seen a strand of mixed gemstone rounds decorating a brim. I’ve seen turquoise cubes fitting right into the right angle where the brim meets the crown. For myself, I’d like to opt for a single strand of small diamond solitaires to adorn my Vaquero.
That will happen about the same time as I gain fame and fortune. I’ll let you know, but don’t hold your breath.
Sources: William Reynolds, Ritch Rand, The Cowboy Hat Book, Gibbs Smith Publisher, Salt Lake City, 2003
http://www.jhhatco.com
http://nudiesrodeotailor.com
