was a bad time, they wouldn’t have been as popular.”
Cox still sells Navy caps, in addition to caps from all American service branches. While the appeal of military caps has waned since “the Top Gun era,” she says there is still a steady market for them. “I probably sell about four thousand caps a year now, most of which are military. I carry ball caps from all of the services … Caps that appeal to our vets are popular: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc.” Her store, Ship’s Hatch, also produces custom-made caps for every U.S. Navy ship that ever sailed.
Military caps, which showed support for the United States and its armed forces during an optimistic decade, continue to be a symbol of patriotism and are often worn by veterans.
FACTOR 8
The Rebellion, Backwards and Sideways
But something else was happening in the 1980s. As the ball cap went mainstream, endorsing such American institutions as Major League Baseball and the military, young people adopted the ball cap and endowed it with another meaning altogether: Wearing a cap became a symbol of personal expression and rebellion—particularly when worn backwards; or sideways.
In the popular music world, two movements turned the ball cap this way: hip-hop and grunge.
Hip-hop, or rap, music was born in New York City during the 1970s. As it became more widespread and eclectic in the eighties—particularly after the founding of Def Jam Recordings in 1984—a hip-hop culture took root, which began to influence music, film, television, and fashion.
An offspring of hip-hop known as “gangsta rap” arrived in the late 1980s. Among the pioneers of this style was a Compton, California-based group called N.W.A. Although their music was often banned from radio play, N.W.A. (which stood for Niggaz With Attitude) sold almost ten million CDs in a five-year lifespan (1986–1991). Group members Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Easy-E all went on to become top-selling solo artists. N.W.A.’s music and attitude were outrageously violent and politically incorrect, and also very popular. Their outlaw look included black-and-silver Oakland Raiders ball caps. The ball cap became a hip-hop staple by the early nineties and remains so today.
In the Pacific Northwest, meanwhile—about nine hundred and seventy-five miles north of Compton—another musical rebellion was taking shape. In the mid-1980s, an alternative rock music known as grunge was attracting a following in the Seattle area. Grunge incorporated elements of punk rock and heavy metal, but the music had its own unique sensibility, an odd blend of alienation, anger, and apathy. The best-known bands to come out of this underground rock movement, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, were among the top-selling music artists of the 1990s.
The grunge attitude was reflected in what came to be called “grunge fashion.” Grunge fashion was really anti-fashion, a reaction against what some saw as the yuppiefication of America during the 1980s. Many bands, and fans, sported a working-class look that seemed inspired by Washington state’s lumber industry—checkered shirts, torn trousers, work boots, and baseball caps worn backwards.
Wearing a ball cap has become a symbol of personal expression and even rebellion.
Karl Koch, historian for the New Era cap company, says it all had something to do with irony. “The classic rock bands never wore caps. Then the MTV generation came along and there was this shift. It was okay to do things you’d never done before. It was okay to wear a logging uniform on stage and a baseball cap. Everyone was making fun of things. Everything was ironic all of a sudden.”
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