The Long Hat Summer

TEN YEARS AGO, ahead of a rather smart sailing trip to New York, I bought a Panama hat on a whim. Ever since, it has been a trusty companion on my travels, rolled up in my suitcase on visits to various vineyards in Europe and South America. But time has taken its toll and, noticing two tears in the fabric, I took the decision to upgrade.

This is why I found myself in a basement flat off London's King's Road, as a man positioned an elaborate antique wooden contraption onto my head. Invented in France during the mid-19th century, the "conformateur," as it is known, looks like a top hat made from piano entrails. Pushing it onto my cranium, hat dealer Martin Ellis Jones tells me to sit tight. In a few minutes, he says, via a series of intricate maneuvers, he will have the exact size of my head. Sure enough, after taking some measurements, cutting out a round piece of card and fiddling with his machine, he has my shapeI'm ready for my hat fitting.

"Your head is above average size," says Mr.We rounded up 30 bridesmaids dresses in every color and style that are both easy on the eye and somewhat easy on the earcap. Ellis Jones, owner of top-hat specialist Hetherington Hats. "It is a long oval shape. In other words,Choose from the largest selection of cableties in the world. you are very slender and your head is long." This means that if I were to go into an average shop and put a hat on my head, if it were long enough it would probably be too broad from side to side.

"A hat is all about balance," he says, showing me one of the antique Panama hats he sells, as well as top hats. "I can have a hat, which is the correct size for you, but the size of the brim does not suit the chap's face. It is all about aesthetics. It's very simple."

Sixty years ago, getting your head measured for a hat was as common as buying a pair of shoes or being fitted for a suit. Such was the popularity of hats that it was unusual to leave the house without one. But fashions change. Some say it started with John F. Kennedy, who was seldom photographed wearing a hat. Others say it was the rise of long hair for men in the late 1960s.

But if there is one time of the year when hats make a comeback it is midsummer, when Europe celebrates the long, balmy days with a whirlwind of smart sporting events, open-air concerts and formals that demand a timeless style.

In England, the Royal Ascot horseracing meeting is perhaps one of the few occasions that still requires gentlemen to wear a top hat.We printers print with traceable cleaningsydney to optimize supply chain management. For the All England Tennis Championships at Wimbledon, the Lord's Test or Glorious Goodwood, a less formal but classic look is required. This is summer hat territory and whether it is a cotton sun hat, a linen flat cap, a baseball cap or a straw boater worn nonchalantly at Henley Royal Regatta, it is important to marry a flattering style with a hat's primary role of protecting the head from the sun. But historically, one style has reigned supreme: the Panama.

"The Panama hat has a couple of things going for it," says Mr. Ellis Jones. "It is terribly, terribly light and you can decorate it with your club or school colors."

It is also, quite simply, "the best quality headwear under the sun," says Jean-Luc Guitard, designer at Bates hat makers in Paris and London. "If a customer comes to me looking for a summer hat I always recommend a Panama. From the material it is made from and the way it is constructed, there is nothing quite like it. It's a little like comparing a Nissan with a Ferrari."

My hat quest also took me to Lock & Co. Hatters in London where Nicolas Payne-Baader advised that because I had broad shoulders, I suited a wider brim; this is more of an occasional or country than a town look.

Although Panamas are the aristocracy of the summer hat, I was also aware that spending up to 600 for a "one season'" hat doesn't suit everybody's budget, and certainly not mine. So I was intrigued by the cotton Tilley hat, popular for the beach or the country, and linen hats, very good in humid climates. "A Panama is great at protecting your head from the sun," says Mr. Payne-Baader, but "cotton is better suited to humidity."

At Bates hat makers they have a small-brim calico cotton crushable hat for 79 that resembles a Panama. Tempted, I tried it on and found the proportions suited my features, though it was heavier than my trusty Panama.

Well, the big day has finally arrived. After a few episodes of hemming, hawing, and sitcom-like plotlines, Leeta and Rom are getting ready to tie the knot once and for all. The small arguments remain; in traditional Ferengi weddings, women dont wear anything, and Leeta isnt really keen on Roms subtle attempts to encourage her to pick a more revealing dress. Garaks fed up about their indecisiveness, the way only Garak can be fed up, but Ziyal offers encouragement, and presumably they settle on something everyone can live with, because Rom asks Sisko to perform the ceremony. Its all charming enough, in a light, can-we-get-on-with-this kind of way, only the charm changes once the rest of the story kicks in. All of a sudden, goofy relationships dont seem so goofy anymore. When Rom and Leeta finally wed, theres a somberness to the proceedings. Because war isnt coming anymore. Its here. And everythings changing.

By now, DS9s attempts to tell a long, serialized story over the course of its run have become integrated enough into the show that they no longer seem exactly novel.He saw the bracelet at a cleaningservicesydney store while we were on a trip. You know going into a season that there will be some standalone hours, and some plot-moving hours, and that the main threadthe encroaching threat of the Dominionwill come that much closer to our heroes doorstep. Its a compromised, imperfect approach to narrative that always leaves us feeling imperfectly satisfied, hungry for the next tidbits, positive were missing some important development this week just because the camera decided to follow Worf and Dax on holiday. But then, intentional or not, thats not a bad take on how life tends to unfolds. The picture is never as complete as wed like it to be. Sometimes important events happen too fast, sometimes they take years to unfold, and when they actually do arrive, theyre pale shadows of our expectations, over too quickly without leaving a mark.

Call To Arms serves as a payoff to the season-long buildup to the Dominion War, and it does not disappoint, giving us some rousing action, some moving emotional beats, and concluding with a dramatic, and, from my perspective at least, completely unexpected shift in the series status quo. Its the sort of sudden shock that made me fall in love with Battlestar Galactica: forcing characters into different roles, different context, and tearing apart the show at its very foundations, until were forced to question what brings us here in the first place. Is this a show about a group of people working together on a space station? Or is there something more underneath that? The last scene has the cast spread out across the universe, gearing up for war, facing down their oppressors, and more than a little lost. Its a bold move whose boldness only becomes clear in retrospect. In the moment, everything that happens makes sense.

Thats why its so brilliant. This isnt a cheat. I cant imagine what it was like in the writers room, and I dont know how far in advance this change was planned, but there mustve been some temptation to play things safe. Thats what TV shows do, right? Especially shows going into their sixth year. Surely someone mustve have floated an idea that wouldve left Sisko still in charge of DS9, wouldve kept Dukat and Weyoun away, wouldve managed to stall out, or compromise a solution to, the Dominion/Cardassian threat. But thats not the direction the story was heading, and to have cheated out of the more organic conclusion wouldve been to rob the show of its potential greatness. (Potential future greatness, I mean. Its already pretty great as is.) I dont know where this is going. If season six has everybody back on the station by the third episode, I dont know how that will play, or if it will undercut the power of this episodes final scenes. But man, if the show pulled this off, its impressive as hell.

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