So many people who aren't Justin Timberlake are wearing fedoras lately.
Photo: Getty Images
Hold on. People who aren't Justin Timberlake are wearing fedoras? Since when?? It's not often that we put on our Fashion Police hats here at MTV Style. In fact, we generally avoid it. We like to think of this as a positive place, one that embraces style as a means of self-expression. We give most outfits the benefit of the doubt, striving to find ways to defend even the most weirdtresting of ensembles, but we can't be expected to live looking through rose-colored glasses. This is where fedoras come in. Don't get us wrong. We definitely don't hate the Al Capone/Bugsy Malone channeling steez—remember when we LOST IT at first sight of Ryan Gosling's Gangster Squad movie wardrobe? #majordreamboat—we just... don't love it either.
We know Justin Timberlake didn't invent the look, and we're pretty sure he isn't FedEx overnighting thousands of hat boxes to his celebrity friends JUST to set the trend ablaze. Still, we can't help but feel that the sudden MASSIVE resurgence of the felted, pinched-crown chapeaus is somehow his fault a product of his influence and return to music. Despite our urges against it, JT brought fedoras back for his 20/20 Experience (they're also apparently one of the only things that survived Tom Ford's discerning styling overhaul). Since then, we've noticed the hats on a bizarrely growing number of celebs.
There are people who adopted fedoras as style staples long before Timberlake's musical homecoming and held strong through it (Ne-Yo, Janelle Monae, Bruno Mars), but there are a shocking amount of relative newcomers to this particular subset of hat game (One Direction's Zayn Malik, Alicia Keys, Zoe Kravitz, etc.). And from Selena Gomez to Joe Jonas to Britney Spears to Christina Aguilera, the House of Mouse (from which JT is also an alum) is yielding a lot of the fedora-wearing stars. Just because one person does it doesn't mean everyone else should follow suit, though, right?
The fact of the matter is: the fedora is an extremely difficult look to pull off. It's super angular, was over-exposed for the duration of the aughts, and depending on the fabric and construction, can be unforgivingly picky about the kinds of clothes and silhouettes that it should be paired with. Bottom line, it does not work for everyone. Sure, there have been a ton of iconic fedoras in recent history—chief among them are arguably the hats of Indiana Jones, JT himself, "Smooth Criminal" era Michael Jackson and 2pac à la "California Love"—but if anything, that should render the look that much more daunting, right? And yet, here we are, shaking our balled-up fists at the sky because there's only room for one fedora in our hearts at the moment and that spot is occupied by Justin Timberlake. To everyone else: perhaps we can suggest the also-trending bucket hat?
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