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It started as the official headwear of ball players and became a favourite
with sports fans and aging tourists. Now at 50, the baseball cap is ubiquitous.
Victoria Beckham dons one when she wants to dress-down and appear relaxed
for the paparazzi. Truckers and rap stars alike are fond of them.
And it is the favoured accessory of the politician keen to emphases
their "man of the people" credentials, among them George W Bush, Hilary
Rodham Clinton or the former Tory leader William Hague.
This versatile item of clothing is the baseball cap, which turns 50
this year. Up until 1954, players wore many styles of headgear, such
as sloughy caps and pillbox styles.
"It was up to the players what they wore, so there was no consistency
among the teams or even among the players on the field," says Crystal
Howard, of the New Era Cap Company. "Some wore unstructured caps, others
chose snug-fitting styles. Some had long visors, others short."
So the company developed a fitted cap as the uniform headwear for Major
League Baseball. Today this style, known as the 59Fifty, remains the
official cap of US ball players.
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Babe Ruth sports an early version
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And its many variations have become a key part of the standard urban wardrobe,
be it for an American tourist, a footballer's wife or a young man aping
a rap hero.
Hannah Spooner, the curator of the Hat Works museum of millinery in
Stockport, says the popularity of the baseball cap is down to the modern
passion for comfort and practicality.
"The peaked and fitted cap is an enduring style. It's good for keeping
the sun out of your eyes - and as it's adjustable, it stays on your
head. That's a winning combination.
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Cap fans
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"There are Victorian era sunbonnets that have a very similar shape to
the baseball cap - except in those days, it would have been to keep the
sun off your pale complexion."
Posh Spice and Naomi Campbell wear baseball caps as an ironic statement,
she says.
"It's a look that says 'I'm so unique that I can get away with wearing
the same thing as the man in the street and make it special'."
On the streets
It is a look epitomised by the young urbanites fond of Burberry accessories,
flashy jewellery and boxfresh trainers who have become known as Chavs,
Scallies, Townies or Neds.
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Bonnets from the late 19th Century
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| It's a style described as council estate chic, a UK-take on the trailer
trash aesthetic. The webmaster of Chavscum.co.uk, a site dedicated to
charting the rise of this urban tribe, says it's inconceivable to imagine
a Chav without a baseball cap.
"The baseball cap is so much a part of the uniform of the Chav that
I'm sure they are issued with one at birth.
"It is amazing to think how a piece of apparel that started out 50
years ago as a genuine piece of sportswear has now become so synonymous
with Britain's underclass."
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Has it come to this?
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