The Animalistic Urge to Wear Another Set of Ears
Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? They sure do for the kids who've been buying hoodies and beanies recently, as young shoppers seek out enough bunny-eared caps and devil-horned hoodies to outfit a zoo.
We’re not talking about trapper hats, either, with ear-covering flaps that fold up as you'd like. We’re talking hats with stitched-on accents that typically giving the wearer a set of animal ears or horns.
It's part childhood regression, part Y2K fixation, and part Gummo — as in just wearing bunny ears for the sake of it.
Ears on hats were once a detail relegated solely to caps and onesies for babies but, now, animal-eared hats are unironically fashion. Well, maybe a little ironic.
Ear hats as fashion can be traced to Safety Bear’s fuzzy ear-flapped hat that also wear an additional set of little bear ears on the crown, which came to prominence in the anything-goes post-pandemic fashion of 2021.
A 2021 post showing the brand's signature bear cap still attracts people asking where to buy the eponymous Safety Bear hat and pining for rare iterations (a polar bear version is in high demand).
Charles Jeffrey Loverboy was also early to the ear hat game and has since been exerting dominance over all these other animal hat newcomers.
The British designer specializes in punkish wearables that've long been accessorized with hats topped off the ears of cats, bats and bunnies.
The Loverboy ears range in levels of pointiness and price but they're all rendered appreciably fashionable by the chunky knit, dangling threads, and minimal weave that's rarely offered in more than two colors.
They're as fun as anything that granny could knit but they have just enough edge to be proper fashion
You can likely trace the contemporary zeal for ear hats back to Jeffrey's stylized headgear, which were given place of prominence in trend-setting stores like Dover Street Market, the locus of many a trend.
Similarly, COMME des GARÇONS SHIRT BOYS beanie with Mickey Mouse-ish looking ears was slow to sell at $159 at stores like DSM when it released in Fall/Winter 2018 but renewed hype has inspired resellers to flip (or attempt to flip) it for many, many more dollars.
We're talking "bargains" starting at $300 and rare iterations commanding four figures.
The contemporary ear hat, which started appearing more frequently within the past year or two, is typically a bit more approachable than its wanton forebears, which cared less for wearability than for simply making a statement.
There’s a real Y2K throughline knitted through recent examples like KNWLS' pointy-eared wool beanie and the uber-pointy lid created by Shayne Oliver's Anonymous Club, which almost looks more like a pickup in a PlayStation 2 game than a fashion accessory.
Coperni’s $350 horned hoodie, favored by celebrities like Dua Lipa and the TikTokers who adore them, feels similarly kitschy, like a luxurious version of a souvenir hoodie one would buy on holiday abroad.
Marc Jacob’s trend-savvy Heaven label even made a $150 Frank the Bunny hat in homage to Donnie Darko as the ultimate piece of nostalgia headgear (head-ear?).
The huge ears are probably the only reason it's hard sell because Heaven's other bunny-eared caps have long since sold out.
Much like hemlines are a lowkey indicator of economic ups and downs, perhaps ear-laden hats and hoodies are an indicator that we’re looking for a little whimsy amidst uncertain times.
You could make a good argument that this mirrors the rise of girlhood, as adults seek solace in remnants of childhood.
If a DGAF bob or a pretty bow in your hair is how the Blair Waldorf prepsters channel good vibes, then a $4,490 Burberry hat knitted in the shape of a duck — with the wings as "ears" — is… well, another way to signal that while all these other things are so serious these days, fashion doesn’t have to be one of them.
