Jughead cap in real life?

Cafe Society
1

I’m putting this in Cafe because it deals in “fashion.”

DesertRoomie has started going through The Andy Griffith Show on Netflix and is at the point where Gomer has left for the Marines and Goober has taken his place. We noticed Goober wears a felt(?) cap that has an upturned brim with points on it, exactly like Jughead wears in Riverdale. I always figured that was something only in the comic but some research shows they existed IRL, with the note “In the 1920s and 1930s, such caps usually indicated the wearer was a mechanic.”

This makes sense why Goober would wear one but the cite on the statement above leads back to the Archie comics. Were these things ever common in real life and why would a mechanic wear one? FWIW, you can buy one today on Etsy, for $64! The irony, it burns.

2

We’ve had threads about this in the past. It was called a Whoopee Cap, and they sometimes used to sell them in those ads in comic books. The more “official” ones were made from old fedoras cut up and repurposed

edited to add – missed your link to the same place. An earlier thread had a link to an ad for them.

Here’s a link to an article with a copy of the ad

3

I wear black beanies (toques, eh) in the winter, so thanks for the link. I’ll prolly order one after I get my tax refund; I think they look sharp.

4

The one Cole Sprouse wears as Jughead is definitely knitted and not felt. Not that that makes a difference as to the origins of the hat.

5

I suspect that’s simply pandering to their audience.

6

There were a couple of ‘Our Gang’ shorts in which one of the background performers wore a whoopee cap.

7

I remember seeing those in the 70’s. They were generally in the company of a pair of pin-covered “Mork” suspenders, and adorned with smaller pins and badges. Somewhat like this image.

8

It covers your hair when you are working on greasy, oil-dripping equipment. It holds your hair in place while you are working on machinery with moving parts that might catch your hair and rip it off. The lack of a brim lets you wear it in cramped spaces.

9

Sounds like the rationale for the Printer’s folded paper hat

10

All of which (and more) are reasons that I own a handful of Comeaux caps.

Best damn trade work hat ever.

ETA: Shame to see the rebel flag on that page; I thought they loved this country.

11

Hmmmm. Sounds like a bad case of Sad Etsy Boyfriend.

12

Bette Davis wore one in interviews in her later life.

13

I made one myself back in the 60s, out of one of my dad’s cast off fedoras. (He probably had 5-6 of them at any time! Different day…) As I recall, I cut some shapes out of the crown - ISTR a crescent moon. I used to collect buttons/pins, and I pinned a couple to it.

I must’ve been STYLING!

14

I did some searching on this as it seemed right to me as well. Instead I came across this weirdness.

15

Never saw one in real life but woooow that’s so cool??

16

From what I’ve seen in old films, milking hats were similar, looking either like beanies or like baseball-style but with the visor removed. In reaching for the cow’s udder, the farmer might have to press his face right up against the cow’s flank, and any kind of brim would have gotten in the way.

17

(Emphasis mine)

I suggest that the most important question now is whether this was a retronym based on the famous comic book character, or if the character was named for the hat he always wore.

18

I’ve noticed Goober’s has a couple holes in the crown which would render it less effective in keeping grease out of your hair. Style over utility, I suppose.

19

Pretty sure it’s the former. Surprised it’s not also called a Goober cap.

Both Jughead and Goober seem like the sort of old timey derogatory nicknames kids used to give each other, like “Boner” or “Stinky”. Only that makes sense for Jughead who’s a teenager, and not so much for Goober, who is a forty year old man who owns a gas station. By the time Mayberry RFD was on the air, I’m pretty sure the whoopee cap was associated more with kids and juvenile delinquents than mechanics and welders. But it was a show that catered to nostalgia, so maybe they were trying to bring back the older association.

Here’s a picture on Shorpy from 1925 showing a factory press operator wearing a modified fedora in the style of a whoopee cap, without the scalloped brim but with grommets in the crown instead. This is probably more like what actual mechanics of the era wore. This guy on The Fedora Lounge says labor buttons were also popular embellishments, which is a logical forerunner to kids attaching all sorts of doodads and charms to their caps.

Here’s a detailed and well-illustrated blog post discussing the cap, and showing how Jughead’s went from looking like a real whoopee cap to becoming a more stylized crown shape.