It was a joke said by a grocery store checker, who actually reached back over another line I wasn't in, in order to make it. The reference was, of course, to the newsboy cap I was wearing, which is depicted here.
I wear it all the time.
I've worn newsboy caps for a long time. When I first looked for them to wear, they were really hard to find, this being in the pre Internet days. For a while I wore Kangol touring (golf) caps, which are sort of similar, but which are not the same thing. I had a really nice red wool Kangol golf touring cap that's around here somewhere, probably still. But then at some point in the early 1990s I found a Hanna Hats herringbone tweed newsboy that I wore out. Around the same time I found a great Pendleton blue newsboy that had a leather brim, which I unfortunately left in the Seattle airport. The hat depicted is the replacement for the earlier herringbone tweed cap, and is also an Irish Hanna Hats newsboy.
When I started wearing them, they were unusual, but I don't like baseball caps for a lot of wear, and a newsboy folds up. They're a great cap.
Now you see them around, and the British television series Peaky Blinders is the reason why.
This isn't the first time this has happened to me. I tend to wear some really old classics, A2 flight jackets, Levis jackets, ankle high Munson last boots, beaver felt broad brimmed hats, really old-fashioned cowboy boots, B3 flight jackets, M65 field jackets, etc. I like clothing that's practical, not fashionable, functional and which last a long time.
In many instances when I've gone to these styles, I was pretty much alone in wearing them, or it was uncommon, only to later have them suddenly roar into fashion prominence. It's a weird experience.
And when that happens, logically enough, people figure you are adopting a new popular style. Such is now the case with newsboy caps.
The television show Peaky Blinders is a drama focused on the real world late 19th Century and early 20th Century criminal gang, the Peaky Blinders. IMDB summarizes the show as such:
A gangster family epic set in 1900s England, centering on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby.
In reality, the gang members did tend to wear newsboy or flat caps, which makes sense as pretty much every man in the urban working class did.
The real gang was on the decline by the 1910s, and so it wasn't the force depicted in the television series at the period of time in which it was set. In the 1920s they disappeared entirely. They were some really bad guys.
I've heard so much about the series, I decided to try to watch it. I generally like British television and while I had previously tried to watch a snippet and failed, I teed it up to watch the first episode.
It's awful.
I can't give the entire series a fair review as I'm not going to watch it, but the first episode is just flat out bad and full of overdone British tropes. You have your Irish Expats, and street Communists, and people mixing their faith with crime a la The Godfather, and of course Winston Churchill as a sort of government baddy, directing a police baddy. It's not convincing on any of these items.
The haircuts are really weird too, but according to the British newspaper The Telegraph, that's accurate. Enough people must have asked in order for them to write an article about it, in which they stated:
The Peaky Blinders haircut is historically accurate and has been a popular look since the 20th century, particularly amongst young working-class men.
The hair cut originated in interwar Glasgow, when the Neds (petty criminals), had a haircut which was long on the top and short at the back and sides.
In his book, My Granny Made Me An Anarchist, Stuart Christie details how the Glasgow Neds would use paraffin wax to keep the top part in place, despite the fire hazard.
Andrew Davies in his article Youth gangs, masculinity and violence in late Victorian Manchester and Salford explains members of street gangs in England also favoured the undercut hairstyle because long hair put them at a disadvantage during a street fight.
Well okay on the haircuts then, but overall, as to the series, ack.
And no, I'm not a Peaky Blinder. I was wearing a newsboy before this series was ever thought of.
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