A few years ago, I was scrolling through TikTok, doom scrolling as it were. Right when I was about to close out the app, a video came across my feed. A man who embodied cool. Cowboy hat and a denim jacket. He told me he would be making a whiskey drinking hat. Then I spent the next hour scrolling through his page and watching him make hat after hat. That was the first time I was introduced to Wild Hats. I spent the next 18 months watching their content on hat style and deciding that I had to talk to him. I had to understand what was so intoxicating about the hats he churned out every day. So I reached out, and Chandler was great enough to sit down with me and talk through how he has captured the imagination of scores of followers who just want to be as effortlessly cool as he is.
There is this cookie-cutter idea of what hats are these days. There’s a fedora, there’s a cowboy hat, and there’s a persona, right? There’s an avatar. The Avatar is the cowboy. The Avatar is the gentleman in a fedora, right? But that’s one Avatar, but not everybody is that specific avatar. – Chandler, Wild Hats Founder and Hatmaker
A window to you
Your outward appearance is a reflection of your inner self-image. If you are unkempt on the outside, most likely you are chaotic or burnt out on the inside. If you are put together and own your style on the outside, then you are likely the same (or working on it actively) on the inside. That is why the story of Wild Hats struck me. There is an expression with the hat. It is made specifically for you. No mass-produced, run-of-the-mill hats here. A one-of-a-kind piece of art reflective of who you are. That is what I was struck by: that is the secret behind his content and his product.
“You know, every single person has their own story. The entire idea behind the brand is that we provide a window for you to be that person that you were never allowed to be. When you put on your whiskey-drinking hat. It’s like you put that on, and it’s like, now it’s time to have fun, and it almost gives you permission to have fun. You put a Wild Hat on, and it doesn’t matter what you do for a day job. When you put your wild pad on, you’re free.”
Never stop trying
At the center of what we do here at The Manual, there is the desire to help men find who they are and own it. We go from mother to girlfriend to fiancée to wife who dresses us. They put us in what they believe looks good, but we don’t take ownership. That is why you don’t always feel comfortable, because you aren’t a stylish man; you are your significant other’s Ken doll. The key to reversing this trend is simple: Effort.
“At some point in time, everyone, from a male perspective, stops trying. I think it’s really important that even if you’re married, anything you do. I just think it’s really important to try, like, try on your style. Try new things out. Stop holding on to this concept, like anyone gives a f*** about you. Everyone is the main character in their own story. Everyone is walking around thinking about themselves. They’re not thinking about you. They might look at you, but then they apply it to themselves. They don’t say that guy looks stupid; they say, I couldn’t wear a hat like that. So everyone’s constantly, I would argue, just butchering their creativity, the fun they have, and their expressiveness. Under this concept that everyone gives a f*** about them and everyone’s talking about them, and nobody’s talking about you at all, right, and no one cares.”
Chandler is a no-nonsense man with a no-nonsense style. He is who he is, and all he asks is for you to be unapologetically the same. A phone call with Wild Hats to find out what the right kind of hat is for you, and how it can help unleash your inner wild style. So that is the first step for the man looking for more: jump onto his TikTok page and get some inspiration, then get the process started on their site. Like Chandler says at the end of every video, “Stay Wild.”
