Hat attack Tapori-fication of the Trilby

Superstud: The name of a show on UTV Bindass that has a bunch of excited, fashionably-dressed boys massaging a blindfolded non-actor (“sultry beauty”, says the PR label) called Kashmeera Shah, on her stomach in a potpourri and candle-scented lair. The show is hosted by Ashmit Patel, the original non-actor cum superstud of bar-brawl fame.

In one episode, the only one some of us have seen, one such excited, fashionably-dressed boy starts kneading Shah’s lower back. The boy has a minute to show “sultry beauty” some A-rated moves. He’s wearing a hat — a black and white checked Trilby, but falls off the style map for mumbling nervously: “Errr, bonus time nahi milega kya?” (Will I not get more time?)

For what it’s worth, Kashmeera Shah, it’s possible, could carry off a Trilby, blindfolded.

Trilby: A soft felt hat with a narrow brim and indented crown; popular in the UK. (Often confused with a Fedora (more American), which is the same as a Trilby except for a larger, more dramatic brim. While a Panama, think Pierce Brosnan, is made of straw.)

Designer Raghavendra Rathore, driving his jeep in Rajasthan when DNA spoke to him, is not a big fan of hats, although he did have his head covered in the jeep. Hats need a context. They have a use. Warding off the sun, like he was doing, you can’t argue, is a practical use for a hat.

He says it may not necessarily be a prominent trend in India yet but he recently saw some very “crisp hats shown on the Paris runway” — “dandy” and “contemporary”, he calls them. In India though, he says, “we have our own traditional, rural headgear” — i.e. the turban, for one. Hats, catching on as they might be, are still restricted to young, party/college-goers. Next time you’re in a mall or a club or just driving past Jai Hind in Mumbai or the Hindu campus in Delhi, pay attention to the local superstuds.

Rathore, whose best memory of a hat involves a magician, “digs the military look”. In his boarding school days, the pilot cap used to be the ultimate in sophistication. The berets and the piqued caps of the armed forces have always been a matter of pride, but unless you were a military man, or possibly a member of the royal family, hats have never been particularly ‘Indian’.

Pop culture reference-wise, think Don Draper in Mad Men. Think Frank Sinatra. Think jazz and soul musicians much before Wyclef Jean was conceived. Sean Connery wore a hat in the first five James Bond movies — Dr No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice; Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark; and more recently Agent Batista on the show Dexter, and Neal Caffrey in White Collar both donned Trilbies. In the cartoon world, Top Cat, the clever yellow-skinned was a pioneer of the purple hat, circa 1960s Hannah-Barbera studios. We’re going to leave Princess Beatrice and the royal wedding out of this, at least till one of our rich industrial first ladies wear something like that to the Mahalakshmi race course.

Closer home in the film industry, Farhan Akhtar and Abhay Deol really pulled off the look in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The trend has been reignited and pedestrianised. To adopt their style, raid Zara/Mango/Aldo. For better value for money any day still, head to Colaba causeway. In Delhi, Sarojini and Janpath are your best bets. Useful info: Zara has on sale a range of sleek narrow-rimmed straw hats (down to Rs250 from upwards of Rs900).