Hi! I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style. Today, I'm going to be talking

to you about winter headwear, what hat to choose when it's cold outside and you don't

want your ears to freeze off.

Okay guys, this is in support of my article over at The Art of Manliness, so I'm going

to link to that article right down below and go to that article. I'm going to go into a

lot more detail than I'm going to go into here in the video, but I wanted to give you

guys some visuals. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about it.

I really want to stress here is where function trumps style. Usually, I like them to mix

about evenly, but I'm going to say here, when you're talking about cold weather gear or

even hot weather gear to some extent, but cold weather gear, you want to be careful

because your extremities, you can get frostbite on the edges of our ears.

I look around here in the United States. I don't know what has happened, but it seems

like a lot of us, especially younger kids, don't seem to ever want to wear hats. My wife

sees this coming from Ukraine and she goes nuts. She says, "Babushka is going to jump

out of the trees," which if you're Slavic, you understand this. And they would just yell

at you if you do not wear a hat.

But here in the United States, literally in Wisconsin, it is negative 10 degrees outside.

And just yesterday, one of my son's friends, kids running around with a pair of shorts

and no hat on, it's crazy.

So to help you guys understand this though, you're looking at different watch caps. You're

looking at, I don't know, maybe a felt homburg. You're looking at all these different hats

and you're wondering, "What should I wear? What's going to keep me warm?"

Remember, if something's made out of different materials, it's going to have different insulating

properties. So thinking with the function, we always want to lean towards items that

are made from wool or specialty man-made fibers that are made to insulate and keep in heat.

Now, the number of man-made fibers, that's a little over the board. I can't give you

an exact, but if usually you're looking at something and it has like a whole breakdown

of how it actually is going to wick away sweat and it's going to pull that out in the outer

layers, that is usually a pretty good thing.

In fact, I've got one watch cap here made by Carol Davis Sportswear out of, I believe,

Arkansas. Now, she used to be actually out in Nebraska, but in any case, she uses out

of Malden Mills. They use this really high tech power stretch polytech I believe is what

it's called, and what it does is it wicks, so something like this is really great if

you're going to be out in snowmobile trails and wearing a helmet over this and you're

going to be sweating or you're going to have multiple layers and you need something that's

going to wick away moisture from your body.

A lot of times though, and let's just say you're out walking around New York City and

you're wearing a really nice overcoat, a simple dress watch cap is going to work perfectly

fine, and this is a dress watch cap for a number of reasons.

One, it's actually charcoal gray, not black exactly. Black would work fine and maybe a

little bit lighter gray would be fine as well, but it doesn’t really have any big patterns

in it. It does have a bit of a pattern in the weave, but actually a little bit thicker

knit weave is a bit dressier with this dark weave here. So functionally, it will keep

you warm. It's made from wool, so it will do a good job insulating, but it has a bit

of a dressy look to it, which again is achieved with the weave and with a solid dark color.

Now, this is an example of a watch cap from my son's wardrobe and it was the only one

I could find with some bright colors, but you can see all the colors here, not really

bright, but anytime you start to introduce patterns like this -- and this one's cotton.

No, I'm sorry, this is acrylic. The great thing about an acrylic watch cap is you can

simply throw it in the wash when it's dirty. You can't do that with wool. Well, with cotton,

you can do that as well, but this acrylic is going to do a better job than cotton in

terms of wicking away moisture and actually retaining heat, so this works well for young

men.

So this is very informal. As you can tell, it is a pig, one of my daughter's hats, but

basically this is a chuyo. Anyone from South America or anyone that does any snowboarding

or anything like that, you'll probably recognize the design of the hat. Ignore the pig. This

was the only example I had in my house, but the great part about this South American style

hat is that it covers the ears. A lot of American watch caps, they don't have anything like

this. South Americans, maybe they were a bit smarter and said, "Hey, we're going to cover

the ears and we're going to have it so that it wraps around your cheeks."

Now, when it comes to levels of formality, whenever something starts to cover the ears

and wrap around the face, it technically drops down on levels of formality, and part of that

is being able to send signals when you're engaging. However, let's say today actually,

the President of the United States, Barack Obama, he is having his inauguration. If you're

watching this video, it's probably already passed and everything, but in any case, if

you are out there at that time, I would say dress for function because this is probably

going to be super cold out there. But if the weather isn't that bad and you're just bringing

out a hat just to add and you think you're going to be just fine, then you would maybe

want to look at something a bit more formal.

What do I mean by formal? Well, there are other hats out there which you can consider.

I've shown you examples of watch caps or watch caps form around the head. They are informal,

but they work out very well functionally. For more formal hats, we want to look at maybe

ushankas or trapper hats. This is not formal. This one actually is coming out of Eddie Bauer,

but it gives you an idea of the ushanka, so you can see that right there.

Now, having lived and spent time in Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union,

I can tell you over there, that's where a lot of these winter styles come from because

they live and breathe in the cold weather. If you've ever been up to Siberia, you know

what I'm talking about. Over there, winter is harsh. Here in the United States, you can

get away with it to an extent, not so much up in Canada, but if you do not wear the proper

gear, you're going to get frostbite really fast in those parts of the world. And as they

had to dress nice, they came up with a number of different styles.

So we have the ushanka. We have the astrakhan. The astrakhan, that one is -- I don't have

an example with me. Go ahead and I'm going to link to it in the Art of Manliness article,

so go ahead and check that one out.

We also have the wool newsboy. That is more of an American version, but I would say the

wool newsboy, it's more of like a cap on top. It looks like the traditional newsboy, but

it's going to be made from usually a thicker weave. And more, it's not going to protect

the sides of the head as well.

The nice thing about the ushanka or the trapper hat is that you can unbutton it. I've seen

men do this. Most Russians or Ukrainians I've seen, they never do this, but you can bring

the hat down like that to cover the ears and this is what we consider more of the trapper

hat, but when it's up like this -- and a lot of ushankas I've seen, I've never seen them

come down. They all look like they can, but I've never grabbed some random former Soviet

guy and tried to pull his hat down to check that, so I can't tell you.

Okay, so there are also dress hats, so the homburg, a number of other dress hats, you

can get dress caps that are formed on top. They come in felt and that's going to be a

bit heavier. It's going to protect more from the wind and it's going to have a dressier

look. However, it's not going to cover the ears or protect the sides of the head, but

often it will keep the top of the head warm.

Then we also have a particular military winter wear. A lot of this, I think, which sets it

apart is you'll see it doesn’t always cover the ears, and this plays into effect as we

don't want to muffle sound, so that's one thing you often notice, is they have a little

pop-up so that you can still hear pretty well and it doest muffle the sound. In addition,

they're not going to really care much about style, but in doing so, because they focus

on function, I think a lot of them are pretty stylish. Different militaries around the world

have different hats they come out with. Check out the article. I show a few pictures and

I link to a few as well.

Okay, so the hat is just a piece, gentlemen. There are other parts. Don't forget your scarf.

I'm going to link to my scarf article down below. I put out quite a few videos and a

great article on how to tie different types of scarves. In addition, consider something

like a neck gaiter or a dickie and this is really nice. Actually, again, I got this from

Carol Davis Sportswear. I do a review on it and I love it because it slips right over.

And even if I'm wearing a really nice overcoat, I can wear this and it keeps my neck warm

and it comes up here and basically makes it look like more of your turtleneck, but it

comes right off. I love this little piece of gear.

If it's super cold and you're going to spend some time outside like down in Antarctica,

then you see things where they cover every single part of the body, and that's where

you've got a full hood on with goggles, so if it calls for it, make it happen.

All right, guys, this has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style. If you like this

video, I would appreciate it if you click on the "like" button. Make sure you subscribe.

And if you haven't already, make sure to grab my free 47-page e-book on Men's Style. I linked

to that down below as well. I will see you guys in the comments. Bye-bye.