MIX AND MESH

By Benjamin Nugent

For the first time since the age of Humphrey Bogart movies, art students in New York City and bartenders in Dearborn, Mich., are wearing the same hat. This time around, it's the mesh baseball cap, and it's usually worn high on the head, for a hardy agrarian look, or sideways, for a dash of urban knowingness. Pontiac, John Deere and their industrial brethren had been planting logos on the caps for years when in the late '90s aspiring rock musicians in such hip neighborhoods as the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, N.Y., started wearing them as a tribute to Rust and Farm Belt masculinity. Now fashion designers like Heatherette, below, place them on the perfectly coiffed heads of runway models, and Hollywood blades like Benicio Del Toro wear them out on the town. The big ol'brim might even protect their vision from camera flashbulbs. --By Benjamin Nugent