The Art of Wrestling – New Era Baseball Hats

I had a perfect column drop into my lap when I opened up my Yahoo! e-mail account yesterday morning.  The WWE has partnered with New Era and come up with some baseball caps for some of their bigger Superstars.  Logo creep for both the WWE and New Era is a problem for all of these hats.  The color coordination of the WWE swoop with each hat is a nice touch though.

This Degeneration X hat isn’t very good.  They’ve used the spray paint logo for a while now but it doesn’t translate onto a hat well because it is off center and the “dripping” portion of the paint looks bad compared to the nice embroided and raised DX letters. 

The Hardy Boyz hat is reminds me of the Colorado Rockies hat.  Though the logo isn’t completely symmetrical, the design itself is evenly weighted.  The colors are the same as their shirt so I don’t like it.  Black as a background to a dark purple (it isn’t quite deep purple but ir’s dark enough) is a bad idea because they’re too close in tone.  This problem arises on the bill of the hat.  The biggest example may be of how lost the swosh is on the back of the hat even when it is contrasted by the white WWE.  If the green was closer to neon, it would help to create a contrast.

Up next is Edge’s hat.  It has a symmetrical design which evokes a bit of the Astros hat with the star in the center.  The white trim around the ladies is fantastic.  The white trim along with a bright rust star help to bring this design to the top.  The black hat and bill is the perfect backdrop. 

Rey Mysterio has yet another Mexican inspired piece of apparel.  The script for the numbers even evokes a certain Latin quality.  Having three different numbers will make it unsymmetrical, but as with the Hardy hat, it is well balanced.  Red and green are two of the colors of the Mexican flag.  The red bill helps to lighten up the hat as a whole which is a positive in this design.  The green and black are both dark but the red is light enough to help brighten it up.

The Undertaker’s hat has a similar design flaw as the Hardy Boyz hat.  The purple is light enough and the white trim help to pop it better though.  It is also a symmetrical design.  It’s mighty simple and again close to the Rockies design and it works.

John Cena’s hat is pretty slick.  It uses the fantastic color combonation that the Baltimore Orioles.  The white front panel along helps to pop the Chain Gang logo along with the black trim around the letters.  The orange bill is the real homage to the Orioles hat because they could have used black and the design would not have been a problem.  The orange letters alone may have made the color look arbitrary though so going with an orange bill helps to nail down the quality of the design.  This idea was a genius part of the Orioles hat.

The last design is for HHH.  This hat uses the simple black and silver color scheme brought to you by the Oakland Raiders.  The only part that throws off complete symmetry is the Triple word.  The Iron Cross is a staple HHH design.  It’s an fine hat if you enjoy that color combination.  I’d prefer a silver bill.

Those are all the new hats fom New Era.  I think New Era helped reigned in the normally gaudy designs of the WWE to make these hats successful with one exception.  – Kevin

Contact me about your fashion faux paus at kevin@stuntgranny.com.

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply