Winter Hats With a Brim: What did we just invent?

We could talk all day long about our Original Howley. With decades of experience with this premium fleece hat, we’ve gained great insights into why this hat performs so much better than knit hats at keeping you warm without overheating, remaining comfortable all day, and managing sweat when you’re pushing your limits.

But in our constant search for better gear, we were struck that there was no performance winter gear with a full brim. Hats evolved to have full brims because they offer real advantages, protecting you from both the sun and the elements. So why were there no cold weather hats that included a brim? Do people like when snow goes down the back of their necks?

Go looking for a hat with a brim and you will find one of three things: a baseball cap, which during winter shouldn’t see the light of day until spring training, a fedora or cowboy hat, which might look sharp but are marginally effective at keeping you warm and at the same time rather delicate, or finally a knit hat with a stiff little baseball cap brim sewn onto the front, which is closer to a beanie wearing a costume.

What we didn’t find was what we set out to find: a genuinely warm, high performance winter hat with a real brim wide enough to do a job. As we set out to fix this, we quickly realized this wasn’t going to be as easy as we thought it would be.

The brim is a manufacturing problem, not a design problem

Sketching a brimmed winter hat was easy; making one that works was considerably more difficult.

A brim needs structure. It has to hold its shape under its own weight, not to mention when it is wet, or packed, or when the wind catches it. In most hats, this is accomplished by sandwiching either plastic or cardboard stiffeners inside the brim.

We quickly realized this was not going to work with our wonderful materials & hats. Stiff means inflexible, and our hats work so well because they do stretch. Having a stiff brim sandwiched within a hat with stretch sucked in oh so many ways!

We also realized having a stiff full brim meant that sizing and fit would be critical and difficult. It all felt a little too ‘precious’ for the type of performance winter gear we’re after. No wonder no one had ever done this before!

Our answer took years and hundreds of failed prototypes, but ended up with a patent application. The patent-pending brim on The Boss Howley and The BLVD is unlike anything widely available today. With a stiffener only at the outer perimeter of the brim and strategic use of two-way stretch materials, our brim design provides a totally new way to get the perfect fit. At the same time, the design is robust enough to still be thrown in the bottom of your suitcase. 

What a brim actually does in winter

If you have only ever worn brimless hats in the cold, the benefits are easy to underestimate. They add up quickly.

Low winter sun. The sun sits closer to the horizon between November and February, which puts it directly in your eyes on the drive home and on any afternoon walk. Snow makes it worse by bouncing the light straight back up at you. A beanie does nothing about this. Two inches of brim does.

Rain, sleet and wet snow. Without a brim, snow, sleet & rain will run down your head and roll down your neck. Gravity is hard to stop. This really short-circuits your gear’s ability to keep you warm. Adding a brim to your gear minimizes this, ultimately preserving the performance your gear was intended to deliver.

Eyeglasses. If you wear prescription eyeglasses to see, you know the single biggest challenge you encounter in winter weather is trying to keep your glasses dry and clear. Having a brim makes this vastly more

Fleece or hardshell: two ways to do it

With our new design in hand, we sought to find the best materials we could find.

The Boss Howley: warmth first

The Boss meets our original vision of The Original Howley with a brim added. Built of the same Polartec fleece that has been the backbone of this brand since the 1980s, it is a raised-pile knit that traps air and delivers about twice the warmth of wool at half the weight.

You choose a 2- or 3-inch brim, and it comes in Standard and MAX sizing in Black and Mocha. Inside, it is airflow-lined, which matters more than it sounds. A warm hat that cannot vent becomes uncomfortable the moment you step into a heated building, and most of winter is spent moving between cold outside and warm inside.

What you will find in use is that this is the most casual fully brimmed hat available. Harkening to a bygone era when everyone wore brimmed hats, The BOSS is an instant new American classic. 

The BLVD: structure first

The BLVD is a hardshell hat, meaning the outer layer is smooth and a bit stiffer than conventional fleeces, while still providing ample stretch. This results in a hat that can hold its shape, while still fitting like it was made for your head. That combination is unusual. Structured hats are normally rigid and unforgiving; soft hats are normally shapeless. This one is both.

It carries a 2-inch brim, is airflow-lined, comes in Black and Air Force Blue, and uses the patent-pending fit system to cover one size comfortably up to a 7 1/2. It is the hat for when you want a clean, sharp profile: dressed up or down, in town, in a car, on the mountain.

There is also The Edison, a flared hardshell, if you want the structure and a different silhouette at a lower price.

Why brim width changes everything

A 2-inch brim is the easy one to live with. It sits close to the face, gives you real coverage from sun and weather, and never gets in the way of a car door, a hood, or a doorway.

A 3-inch brim is a statement. More shade, more coverage, more presence, and a stronger silhouette. It is closer in feel to a western hat, and it suits a broader face and a taller frame particularly well. Additionally, a 3” brim is well suited to be arc’d like a cowboy hat.

Try one, and you will not go back

That is a bold claim, and we are comfortable making it. Everybody who has spent a winter storm in a brimmed hat has the same reaction; there is no going back! We have invented a whole new monster!

Everything is hand-sewn in New Jersey from American-made materials. Have a look at the brimmed hats and pick a brim width.