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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 4/22/2025: The Hat Historian [1]
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Date: 2025-04-22
Vincent Van Gogh: Flowerbeds in Holland (1883)
Good evening, Kibitzers!
Here in the northeast, we’re hurtling into pollen season. I was having trouble refilling my breathing drug for a while, but that luckily turned out to be a miscommunication, wherein the doctor’s office had sent a new prescription and checked off that I had to have the name-brand drug. Thus, the pharmacy texted me that my insurance wouldn’t cover the drug, and I assumed it was my insurer being an asshole — this would surely be nothing new.
I said, can I just buy it then (because I enjoy breathing, even in spring), and they said sure, for nine hundred dollars. It took another couple of days and conversations before I thought to ask if that price was for the generic, inasmuch as they’ve been selling me the generic for some years now. Not only was that NOT the generic price, but if I wanted the generic, why then, it was covered and would cost me zero dollars!
This is a really stupid system of paying for healthcare, but you all know that.
This week, my fishing around in YouTube brought up the Hat Historian channel, curated by Jean-Charles Foyer. Mr. Foyer grew up in France and now lives in Missouri; he has two history degrees and has worked with institutions like the St. Louis Symphony and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The Covid lockdown found him doing that museum-challenge thing where you re-create famous art with people and objects found at home.
From there, he was led to begin his hat-history channel, based on his own hat collection. The English portion of the channel description (it’s repeated in French) reads:
A small channel dedicated to short histories of various hats, presented by a Franco-American historian and hat collector. I try to post a video in English on the first of the month, and one in French on the fifteenth. Hope you enjoy!
True to his word, he produces an English and French version of each of his videos, all of which can be found on his videos page. I’ve picked out a few, but if they interest you, there are plenty more on the channel and he continues to make them — a new one is due on May 1.
He chose to start at the top with the top hat. [8:52]
The tricorn. As an unrepentant community-theater girl, I love that he takes the trouble to wear the hat and to otherwise costume himself appropriately in each episode. [8:40]
The pith helmet. [9:56]
The beret. (At last, we find out what’s up with that little thing that sticks up in the middle!) [10:59]
He has a few “Chapeau Shorts”, addressing more generalized hat questions. Here, he explains the origins of the hatband. [2:45]
And here, we learn why people tip their hat when meeting someone. [3:43]
The fez (because you’re never gonna do it without the fez on). [9:49]
The spiked “Pickelhaube” helmet. [10:13]
The mortarboard. [8:21]
The chef’s toque. [7:27]
The bearskin (in which we also learn the origin of those cartoon bombs, among other things). [12:57]
The deerstalker. [7:10]
Keeping up with current events, the miter. [10:22]
And finally, the porkpie. [6:42]
As noted in the preceding video, Charles Mingus wrote the iconic instrumental Goodbye Pork Pie Hat to honor Lester Young. To keep the honoring going, Joni Mitchell added lyrics to it for her 1979 Mingus album (because Joni Mitchell is one of a very small group of people who hear that piece and think, hey, that would make a great vocal!)
Here’s her live performance of the song, with Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Michael Brecker, and Don Alias, live at Santa Barbara County Bowl in September 1979. [6:02]
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