For my previous birthday my parents promised me a fedora. Ever since, it’s been my elusive goal to acquire one.

Maybe my lack of initiative in this endeavor played a (minor) role in my current state of fedora bereavement, but I like to place the blame on the Fates(/calendar). After hearing of a quaint haberdashery on 3rd and Union in Seattle, I have made more than five journeys to the Emerald City and more than five times have returned empty-handed.

My last trip was my first encounter with the “Open” sign on the door (my previous attempts were mostly on Sundays, when the store takes an ever so convenient day of rest), but I realized my nearly three months without a haircut would alter what hat size I needed. And so, alas, I again donned my invisible hood of shame and left, promising to return after a future tonsorial appointment.

***

My interest in the fedora stemmed not from its prominence in the “Indiana Jones” series (or “Mad Men,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Chinatown,” etc.) but rather from a viewing of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.”

The story follows Jef Costello (Alain Delon), a laconic hit man with strict code of conduct and whose only friend is a caged bird. His philosophy mirrors Bushido, the way of the samurai (also referenced in the opening quote—”There’s no solitude greater than the samurai’s, unless perhaps it be that of a tiger in the jungle”—written by Mr. Melville but attributed to a fictional source, “The Book of Bushido”). But instead of armor and a katana, he uses a trench coat, a pistol, ample cigarettes and a fedora.

Ceremony is an integral part of Jef’s philosophy. His ritural before leaving his spartan apartment (starting at about the three minute mark in the clip below) involves walking up to a mirror, putting on his coat, straightening his coat, putting on his fedora, straightening his fedora, then making three swipes of the brim before exiting. The coat and fedora were his armor of anonymity, each being essential to his ability to keep an immaculate arrest record. More so, each take on the extra weight of the stringent honor code he lives by, up to his last breath.

***

Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” also makes a convincing argument for the fedora (and against the bowler). In this film, Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a schmuck who lends out his bachelor pad to married upper management who need a place to take their mistresses. He tries to convince himself he’s the primary benefactor of this arrangement, when really he’s the one most taken advantage of. He can only stand to the side as the woman he’s smitten with, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), is taken for a joyride by one of his superiors, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), which ends in her consumption of half a bottle of sleeping pills. (He arrives just in time to her rescue. The attending doctor, thinking Baxter was the cause of her state—she was found in his apartment—gave him the memorable advice, “Be a mensch!”)

Jack Lemmon and evil bowler in "The Apartment"

Promotion does eventually come Baxter’s way, and he celebrates this occasion by purchasing a bowler hat.

When he was a meager accountant, he participated in the perfunctory world of the late 50s and wore a fedora everyday to work (“The Apartment” was released in 1960). He purchased the bowler hat, which he called the “Junior Executive Model,” as a way of distinguishing himself from his peers; but for him the hat also had the role of being the justification for the disreputable methods of attaining his promotion. After Fran recovered from her attempted suicide (spending a few days recovering at Baxter’s apartment), Sheldrake resumed his non-serious relationship with her. But when Sheldrake asks for the key to his apartment once again to entertain Fran there, Baxter tells him no and then quits, giving up his 27th floor office with three windows. And the last thing he did before getting on the elevator: gave his bowler to the janitor.

Without the bowler, a happy ending to the story is inevitable. Fran realizes Sheldrake is a douche and that Baxter is the man to live happily ever after with. “The Apartment” is the story of how Baxter went from being a schmuck to a mensch. While the bowler represented Baxter at the nadir of his schmuck-dom, the fedora symbolized his rise(/return) to humanity, the realm of the mensch.

***

I finally got that haircut I needed, but now I have to find my way back to Seattle somehow. Again, initiative isn’t the stopping factor. (Really!) There’s some higher power just messing with me. (Right?) Maybe when I finally return to the doors of that quaint shop enough time will have passed that I will be in need of a haircut again. Then the cycle will repeat ad nauseam.

I know once I have a fedora that I will be complete, somehow. (Sartorially?) Maybe my body will start to glow with enlightenment as soon I touch the fedora, like Taimak in the final fight scene of “The Last Dragon.” Then, in order to never lose my future hat, I will become Indiana Jones.