There is a moment in summer when an otherwise perfectly respectable wardrobe tends to come unstuck at the head.
Below the neck, everything may be proceeding rather well: a linen shirt, good trousers, perhaps a pair of loafers that have survived enough summers to look seasoned rather than neglected. Then, almost as an afterthought, on goes the same cotton baseball cap that has accompanied dog walks, airport queues, gardening, school runs and possibly the painting of a spare bedroom.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the baseball cap. We make rather handsome ones ourselves. But somewhere along the way the faded cotton version became the universal punctuation mark of summer dressing: worn to walk the dog, board the aircraft, mow the lawn and, apparently without alteration, go to lunch. Convenience has much to recommend it, but one occasionally longs for civilisation to put up a little resistance. The good news is that convenience needn't be surrendered.
Indeed, one of the most useful summer hats is the beautifully made cloth cap: a Bakerboy or Newsboy cut in linen or seersucker, light enough for hot weather and sufficiently undemanding to be folded gently into a beach bag, slipped into a jacket pocket or tucked into hand luggage when you are not wearing it. Then there are the brimmed hats: the Panama, one of the great pieces of summer craftsmanship, and raffia, its more textural and relaxed cousin.They are not competing answers to the same question. They belong to different kinds of summer.After more than three decades making and fitting hats, we have come to think that choosing well begins not with asking which summer hat is best?, but with something rather more useful:
What do you actually need your summer hat to do?
A hat for a wedding in Provence has a different job from one worn wandering around Rome in August. The hat packed for two weeks beside the sea may require different qualities from the one worn to work throughout a British summer. Someone who wants the sweep and shade of a beautifully shaped Panama is looking for something quite different from the traveller who wants to fold a linen cap into a pocket before lunch.
Material matters. Construction matters. Proportion matters enormously. But ultimately, the finest summer hat is the one that suits the life being lived underneath it.
Begin With the Summer You Actually Have
There is a tendency, when buying clothes for summer, to shop for a life marginally more glamorous than one's own. This is understandable. Sunshine does strange things to the imagination. A week in Mallorca can rapidly acquire a wardrobe intended for six months on the Amalfi Coast; an invitation to one wedding produces enough linen tailoring for a minor diplomatic posting.
Hats are particularly susceptible to this optimism. So when somebody asks us which summer hat they should buy, we rarely begin with a style. We begin with questions. Where are you going? What will you actually be doing? How do you normally dress? Will the hat be packed? Do you want the shade of a proper brim, or simply something cooler than the cap you wear in winter? Are there weddings and garden parties ahead, or is the summer more likely to involve beaches, trains, open cars and lunches that begin at one and mysteriously conclude at five? And perhaps most importantly: do you already wear hats? These answers usually tell us far more than any rigid rule about age, face shape or fashion.
For someone who already lives happily in Bakerboys and Newsboys, linen or seersucker may be the obvious summer transition. The familiar silhouette remains; only the cloth changes. For someone wanting a proper brim, shade and that unmistakable sense of summer occasion, the Panama comes into its own. And for the person who wants a brimmed hat with a little more texture and nonchalance, raffia makes a very persuasive case. There is no hierarchy. Only suitability.
The Cloth Cap: Summer's Underestimated Companion
The great virtue of a cloth summer cap is that it asks remarkably little of its owner while doing rather a lot.
A well-cut Bakerboy or Newsboy has presence. It changes the silhouette of the head, adds character to simple clothes and, unlike the ubiquitous sports cap, carries no particular allegiance to a team, tournament or American university one may or may not have attended. Yet practically, it remains wonderfully uncomplicated.
Wear it through the airport. Take it off on the plane. Fold it gently into your bag. Put it back on when you arrive. Slip it into a jacket pocket when you go indoors. Throw it onto the passenger seat of the car. Put it in the beach bag when the prospect of a swim becomes more compelling than responsibility for one's belongings. Then put it back on.
This is where a good cloth cap earns its keep. Luxury is sometimes presented as the addition of complication — more precious materials, more ceremony, more things requiring special instructions — when quite often the opposite is true. There is considerable luxury in an object that makes life easier while looking better.
And when wool, cashmere and tweed give way to linen and seersucker, the cap changes character completely. The familiar shape remains, but it becomes lighter, cooler and entirely at home in summer.
Linen: The Great Summer Workhorse
Linen has been keeping people comfortable in warm climates for several thousand years, which is a respectable product-testing period by anybody's standards. Made from flax, its appeal in hot weather is well established. It breathes, absorbs moisture and has a naturally dry handle. More interestingly, it possesses a slight irregularity that allows it to become more attractive as it is worn.
The Italians have long understood this. So have the Irish. Linen is not supposed to behave like starched cotton. It softens, creases and settles into itself. A linen shirt after lunch often looks better than it did at breakfast, which is fortunate because persuading one to remain immaculate beyond eleven in the morning requires a degree of personal discipline incompatible with most enjoyable holidays. In a cap, those qualities are particularly useful. Good hatmaking linen has enough substance to hold a silhouette without carrying the density of winter cloth. It gives a Bakerboy or Newsboy body and character while remaining breathable and comparatively light.
That distinction is important. The best summer cloth is not necessarily the thinnest cloth available. A hat still needs to behave like a hat. Fabric without enough body can collapse into itself, leaving something less Bakerboy than abandoned handkerchief. The art is in finding cloth with enough structure to make the shape work and enough lightness to make you forget you are wearing it. At Mister Miller we use linens selected for precisely this balance, including Irish and Italian cloths whose texture becomes part of the character of the finished cap.
Why Linen Works So Well for Travel
This is where the linen cap becomes difficult to beat. A holiday hat must survive rather more than sunshine. It encounters luggage, overhead lockers, car seats, hotel rooms, beach bags, restaurants and that mysterious point towards the end of a trip when everything that fitted perfectly into the suitcase on departure has apparently expanded by approximately 30 per cent.
A soft cloth cap is wonderfully forgiving. It can be folded gently and packed. It occupies little space. It can travel in hand luggage without requiring an elaborate defensive perimeter of rolled socks. If you are wearing a jacket, it can disappear into a pocket when you step inside.
That practicality changes how often the hat gets worn, and this matters. A summer hat is not especially useful if you leave it behind because taking it with you feels like an administrative task. The linen cap simply comes along. For somebody looking for the elusive one-hat holiday, it deserves very serious consideration.
Seersucker: Summer Engineering Disguised as Cloth
If linen is summer's ancient answer to heat, seersucker is one of its cleverest. The cloth is instantly recognisable by its puckered surface, but that texture is not merely decorative. Different tensions in the weave create raised and flat areas, preventing the whole fabric from sitting continuously against the wearer. Air can circulate more freely, which is precisely why seersucker became such an effective warm-weather cloth.
Its history extends well beyond the American summer tailoring with which it later became synonymous. The word itself derives through Hindi from the Persian shir o shakar — “milk and sugar” — traditionally understood as a reference to alternating smooth and textured surfaces. Somewhere along the way, gentlemen in the American South discovered that the cloth also looked exceptionally good while holding a cold drink, and its sartorial reputation was assured.
For hatmaking, seersucker makes tremendous sense. It is light and breathable, but it also has visual life. The puckering breaks up the surface so that even a simple stripe becomes interesting. From across the room a fine blue-and-white seersucker looks crisp and summery; close up, the texture reveals itself. That makes it particularly good in a Bakerboy or Newsboy, where the panels and curves allow the cloth to move rather than forcing it into rigid submission.
The Seersucker Cap: Familiar, But Considerably More Interesting
There is something particularly useful about a seersucker cap because it occupies the space between the very casual and the conspicuously dressed. Take a fine blue-and-white stripe, for example. It works with navy, white, stone, denim, khaki and almost every shade of linen likely to emerge from a summer wardrobe. It introduces pattern without demanding that the rest of the outfit respond in kind.
Our Riley's Candy Stripe was conceived in precisely this spirit: a fine blue-and-white seersucker cut into a proper summer cap. The cloth does the talking, but at conversational volume. That is important. A useful hat should not require an “occasion”. If you find yourself waiting for precisely the right yacht, garden party or Riviera terrace before wearing something, you may be waiting a while.
A seersucker cap can be worn with a T-shirt in the morning and a linen jacket later in the day without looking underdressed for one or overdressed for the other. It is also eminently packable. Which brings us back to perhaps the most compelling argument for cloth in summer.
The Hat You Can Put in the Bag
Packability sounds like an unromantic quality until one starts travelling. Then it becomes extremely attractive. The summer beach bag is rarely an orderly place. It contains sunscreen, sunglasses, swimming things, a book one has every intention of reading, a second book one is actually reading, charging cables, hotel keys and perhaps a bottle of water whose cap has inspired less confidence than one would like.
Into this environment, a linen or seersucker cap can be introduced with remarkably little ceremony. Fold it gently. Put it in. When you need it again, take it out and wear it. The same applies to hand luggage, weekend bags and coat pockets. A soft cap is simply easy to have with you. That gives the cloth cap an advantage not over the Panama, which serves a different purpose, but over the automatic summer default of the cotton baseball cap.
For decades, the baseball cap has enjoyed something close to a monopoly on practical headwear. And again, there is nothing wrong with the shape. A beautifully cut baseball cap in the right material can be an elegant thing. The problem is that convenience has allowed a certain washed-cotton specimen to colonise almost every part of summer life. One sees it at airports, restaurants, resorts and smart hotels, occasionally perched above an otherwise impeccable outfit like a plastic garden chair accidentally left in a drawing room. A linen or seersucker Bakerboy or Newsboy offers much of the same freedom without surrendering character. It is still easy. It is simply rather better dressed.
Bakerboy or Newsboy?
Once you have decided on cloth, the next question is silhouette. The terms Bakerboy and Newsboy are frequently used interchangeably, although there are meaningful differences in cut, panel construction and volume. We have explored those distinctions in detail elsewhere, but the important consideration here is proportion.
A Bakerboy generally gives more volume through the crown. It can have a little swagger, particularly when cut generously, and brings more character to the outline of the head. A Newsboy can be slimmer and neater, sitting closer to the head while retaining the panelled construction that distinguishes it from a conventional flat cap. For someone accustomed to wearing baseball caps, a slim Newsboy can be an extremely easy move. The proportions are familiar enough not to feel theatrical, but the cloth and construction introduce considerably more personality. For someone who enjoys clothes with a little more character, the fuller Bakerboy can be wonderful. Neither is intrinsically cooler. In a suitable summer cloth, both work. The important thing is finding the proportion that feels natural on you.
When Only a Brim Will Do
The considerable usefulness of a linen or seersucker cap does not render the brimmed summer hat obsolete. Quite the reverse. There are days when the particular pleasure of putting on a proper Panama cannot be replicated by anything made from cloth.
A Panama changes more than the temperature around one's head. Its brim alters the architecture of an outfit. A linen suit suddenly makes more sense. An open-necked shirt acquires intention. Even relatively ordinary summer clothes can take on that indefinable air of somebody who appears to have considered what they are wearing without having spent the morning discussing it with a stylist. Then there is shade.
A cap provides useful protection to the face; a good brim creates its own small piece of architecture against the sun. When temperatures rise properly, that distinction becomes considerably more than sartorial. And a genuine Panama is itself one of the great pieces of summer craftsmanship.
Why a Panama Hat Is Something Quite Special
Despite the name, genuine Panama hats are woven in Ecuador from the fibres of Carludovica palmata, commonly known as toquilla palm. The craft involved can be extraordinary. The quality and character of a hat depend upon the preparation of the fibre, the consistency and fineness of the weave and the skill of the person making the hat body. Finer examples require considerable time and dexterity before blocking and finishing even begin.
What eventually appears effortless on the wearer's head is therefore the product of considerable human labour. That is precisely how good craftsmanship ought to behave. It should make difficulty look easy. The Panama has survived endless fluctuations in men's and women's dress because it occupies an unusually useful territory between formality and leisure. It can accompany tailoring without looking ceremonial and relaxed clothes without looking misplaced. It belongs at weddings and garden parties, certainly, but requires neither. A good Panama is equally at home at lunch, walking through a hot city, beside the sea or sitting behind the wheel of something whose roof was clearly considered optional.
There is romance attached to the Panama, but its longevity is not built on romance alone. It is practical.
The woven body is light. The brim provides shade. Natural straw sits beautifully alongside linen, cotton, silk and summer colour. And because the Panama possesses more presence than a cap, it can do a surprising amount of the sartorial work itself. A white shirt, good trousers and a Panama can be quite enough. There are occasions when adding anything further merely indicates nervousness.
Panama or Cloth Cap? Two Different Kinds of Travel Hat
Travel is where the distinction becomes useful rather than competitive. The linen or seersucker cap is the consummate travelling companion when convenience matters. It folds, packs easily and can disappear into a pocket or bag when you step indoors.
The Panama offers something different: a proper brim and that wonderfully composed summer silhouette. Many people travel very happily in one, particularly when the hat is worn rather than packed. There is something rather civilised about arriving somewhere already dressed for the climate rather than excavating one's summer wardrobe beside the baggage carousel. They simply ask different things of their owners. The cloth cap says: take me anywhere. The Panama says: wear me there. Both are rather good propositions.
And What About Raffia?
Raffia occupies another corner of the summer wardrobe. Where the Panama tends towards crispness and definition, raffia can bring greater texture, softness and informality. Its natural character works beautifully with the clothes into which summer gradually persuades us: washed linen, loose shirts, drawstring trousers, sandals and unstructured tailoring.
A well-made raffia hat need not be rustic. Quite the opposite. The texture of the fibre can give a brimmed hat enormous sophistication precisely because it does not look too perfect. It is particularly good beside the sea, on relaxed weekends and on holidays where the dress code has become pleasantly theoretical. If Panama arrives at lunch on time, raffia may appear twenty minutes later wearing sunglasses and somehow get away with it. For someone who wants the shade and presence of a brim but finds the classic Panama slightly more polished than their wardrobe requires, raffia can be an excellent answer.
We have written separately about the distinctions between Panama and raffia — their fibres, construction and character — because they deserve more attention than can sensibly be given here.
Which Is the Coolest Summer Hat?
There is no honest single answer because temperature depends upon more than the name on the fabric label. Fibre matters, but so do weave and construction.
Linen breathes exceptionally well and has that characteristic dry handle. Seersucker's puckered construction reduces continuous contact and encourages air circulation. A Panama combines a lightweight woven body with the shade of a brim. Raffia's performance varies according to its weave and construction. The interior of the hat matters too. Linings, sweatbands, seams and structure all affect how something feels after several hours in warm weather. This is why a hat maker cannot sensibly select summer materials by appearance alone.
We handle them. Cut them. Sew them. Steam them. Watch how they move. Discover which behave beautifully around a curve and which decide halfway through production that cooperation is beneath them. Material selection is part aesthetics, part engineering and occasionally diplomacy.
What Colour Summer Hat Should You Choose?
Summer naturally lends itself to lighter shades: stone, cream, sand, tobacco, pale straw, washed blue and softer greens all sit easily with warm-weather wardrobes. But there is no requirement for a summer hat to impersonate a beach. Navy linen can be exceptionally useful. Khaki seersucker works beautifully. A blue-and-white stripe can provide just enough interest against otherwise simple clothes.
The sensible approach is to look at the wardrobe you already own. If you spend summer in navy, white, olive and stone, choose a hat that belongs naturally among them. If your clothes are more colourful, a neutral hat may provide balance. The most stylish summer hat is rarely the one that looked most impressive in isolation. It is the one that keeps finding its way onto your head.
How Should a Summer Hat Fit?
Warm weather makes proper fit particularly important. A hat that feels merely snug on a cold day can become distinctly irritating in August. The fit should feel secure without pressure. You should be able to wear the hat for several hours without becoming conscious of the band around your head.
Measure around the point at which the hat naturally sits, approximately a centimetre above the ears and across the forehead, keeping the tape comfortable rather than pulling it tight. Do not deliberately size down because you are worried about wind. A headache is an unusually high price to pay for aerodynamic confidence.
Correct sizing also affects appearance. A cap that is too tight can distort through the crown. A hat that is too loose may sit lower than intended and alter the relationship between brim, crown and face. As with tailoring, small measurements have surprisingly large consequences.
What If You Think Hats Don't Suit You?
This is one of the most persistent things we hear. “I don't suit hats.” After more than three decades fitting them, we remain deeply suspicious of the claim.
Usually the person has tried the wrong size, the wrong proportion or the wrong style. Occasionally all three have conspired at once, which is enough to damage anybody's confidence. Different hats change the face in completely different ways. Someone who feels conspicuous in a wide brim may look entirely at home in a slim linen Newsboy. Somebody underwhelmed by a narrow cap may suddenly discover that the extra volume of a Bakerboy balances their features beautifully.
Face shape is relevant, but it is only part of the picture. Height, shoulders, hairstyle, glasses, clothing and character all matter. This is why we prefer fitting to rules. The objective is not to determine whether you are “a hat person”. It is to find the hat that feels like yours.
So Which Summer Hat Should You Buy?
Start with the summer you actually live rather than the one suggested by the holiday brochure. If you want something light, elegant and exceptionally easy to travel with, begin with linen or seersucker.
Choose linen for its dry handle, natural texture, versatility and ability to become more personal with wear. Choose seersucker for its breathability, puckered construction and unmistakably fresh summer character. If you want the shade, architecture and effortless elegance of a proper brim, choose a Panama. And if you want a brimmed hat with more texture and a softer, more relaxed attitude, explore raffia. There is also no rule insisting that one hat must shoulder the entire burden of summer. Nobody expects a single pair of shoes to manage the beach, a wedding, a ten-mile walk and dinner equally well. Hats are entitled to similar professional boundaries.
From the Workshop: The Summer Hat You Actually Wear
After decades around hat making, one becomes sceptical of objects that require an elaborate explanation for why they are useful. The best materials tend to make their case rather quickly. Linen breathes and travels. Seersucker creates air and texture. Panama provides shade and elegance. Raffia brings texture and ease.
Our job as hatmakers is not to overwhelm those characteristics with design, but to understand them: choosing the right cloth or woven body, cutting and shaping it properly, balancing the proportions and allowing the material to do what it does best. Summer is particularly unforgiving of getting this wrong. If a hat is too heavy, you feel it. If the construction does not breathe, you know. If something is so impractical that you continually leave it at home, its theoretical virtues become largely academic. A good summer hat should improve the day rather than require management.
It should deal competently with sunshine, add something to what you are wearing and become increasingly familiar as the weeks pass. Ideally it acquires some evidence of a life well spent: journeys taken, lunches prolonged, beaches visited and perhaps one or two occasions on which somebody else tried it on and was irritatingly pleased with the result. For some, that hat will be a Panama, for others, raffia. And for a surprising number of people, the indispensable summer companion will be a proper Bakerboy or Newsboy in linen or seersucker: beautifully cut, breathable, characterful and sufficiently practical to go wherever summer happens to take you.
Fold it gently into the beach bag. Slip it into your pocket. Put it on the passenger seat. Wear it to lunch. Take it away for the weekend. Or put on the Panama, step into the sunshine and enjoy the peculiar satisfaction of wearing one of the great summer hats exactly as it was intended. That, to us, is what summer luxury should be. Not something made precious by being kept for best, but something made valuable by how beautifully it earns its place in your life.
Further Reading & Advice
Choosing the right hat involves more than finding the correct size. Fit, shape, proportion and craftsmanship all influence how a hat feels and how naturally it becomes part of your wardrobe.
Hat Buying Guides
From The Workshop
Explore the traditions, materials and craftsmanship behind British hatmaking in Hatter's News.
→ Why Some Hat Workshops Produce Better Hats Than Others
→ Why Wool May Be the Greatest Luxury Material Ever Invented
→ What Makes a Hat Truly Hand Made
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