An ode to my "Sundance hat"

NOT spon con, but if you're listening, I'll take more.

If there is anything I have learned from my mother, it’s that you should always get at least one new clothing item before a vacation—to save for the trip, just to make things a little more exciting.

Last month I went to Park City for Sundance Film Festival, and all around, it was a sweet deal. I received a stipend from the Sundance Institue, which covered my airfare and more (thank you, Sundance!) I stayed with my friend’s parents who live on the mountain for the whole week. My tickets, to any and all movies of my choosing, were free—with my press pass. I got free hot chocolate and free cocktails and free caviar on tiny hashbrowns at various events, parties, and “activations,” and when I wasn’t at one of these give free away spots, I had snacks in my bag, which I packed from a huge suburban pantry. I took the free bus all around the city, or hitched rides with my friends. In other words, for a trip to a very expensive city, where I rubbed shoulders with expensive people in expensive clothes and expensive cars who funded or acted in this or that expensive movie, I knew I would be able to do the trip about as cheaply as I could imagine. I was proud of myself. I was basically owed one new item.

I knew what the item would be before I even decided I should buy it, because I’ve been thinking about it for years—stalking its siblings at resale in Depop shops, saving it to my wishlist on The Real Real. A few days before my trip I texted my friends Dalya and Mikaela: “I think I need this hat.” Dalya replied: “They have it at Colbo.”

I called Colbo: “Do you have the sheepskin Cawley Studio hat, in any color? I would take it any color, but I see it’s sold out online…”

The stoned surfer guy on the other end had a hard time describing the one they had, but they did seem to have some version of it, by the general geography of what he was describing: “fur; the thing that wraps around the front.” So I trekked to Chinatown with long underwear under my jeans. I got hungry and stopped for a sandwich at Regina’s Grocery. Dalya met me there. Olive oil was dripping down my wrist.

As soon as we walked into Colbo, I saw her—the hat. They were about to get more in, the sales associate told me. (I didn’t care. I had to buy one today. I had to get my one new item.) This batch of hats ran a little small, she added. “She” (Mrs. Cawley herself?) would be sending a new shipment soon, the sales associate told me. But she wanted all the customers to know that if this one didn’t fit, the next run would.

The small white one was too small. (Fuck.) Then there was the camel one, right in front of me, on a riser—the only Medium/Large in the store, maybe in all of Manhattan. If this hat right here didn’t fit me, my life would be over. My vision would be ruined. I kept thinking of Ursula Parrot’s character in Ex-Wife, who is always desparate for new frocks and hats and furs to impress her suitors. Dalya and I had both just read it.

I pulled on the hat. It fit snugly over my ears, but looked just how I wanted it to: sort of Russian, sort of Anna Delvey, sort of 1980’s apres ski. I admired myself in the mirror, with borrowed sunglasses, and the sales associate told me—fawningly, to make a sale—that it looked “perfect with my hair.” I immediately placed in on the checkout counter, bit my lip as I looked at the tag, and touched to pay. This was the most expensive hat I have ever purchased. Hopefully it remains this way. “You’ll have this for years to come though,” Dalya said to me when I looked nervously at the tag. Always my worst enabler.

“That’s not a regular beanie!” Luke’s sister said to me when I showed her the hat at dinner later that night. The thing is, it wasn’t a beanie at all: it was a “CLASSIC SHEEPSKIN CAP, IN A SUEDE BACK WITH CURLY HAIR INTERIOR. SUPER WARM AND COZY, PERFECT FOR A COLD DAY.”

I went on a podcast while I was at Sundance, but my main assignement was an assessment of the US Dramatic Competition and also the festival “scene.” What better way to conduct an ethnographic experiment than by looking the part? (well-dressed, important.) The hat, I rationalized, was exactly what I needed.

“Great hat!” a really cute volunteer said when I got to the front of the press line for my very first screening at Sundance, cutting hoards of people all looking at me wistfully. Success, I thought.

Every time I got into a theater, I took off the hat and put it in my Baggu tote with all my other belongings: Sunglasses, press pass, buttered popcorn. After a day or two of popcorn I noticed an oil stain on the suede, and started wearing that part on the back of my head.

Oh well, I thought. This is why you save the one new item for the trip…

xx