MEMORIES:

Few caps have ever captured the funkalicious style of the Apple Cap, a hat so decidedly cool, it could have only come from the 70s. Bearing a slight resembence to a 1930s era paperboy cap, and looking a bit like a fresh batch of Jiffy Pop, these groovy caps were in a class all their own, oozing with cool and propped proudly atop the heads of anyone who wanted to exude a little social defiance.

 

Perhaps the first person to catapult the Apple Cap into the style radar of America was a little tyke who could dance like no other named Michael Jackson. With his slick moves and silky voice that had the soul of a thirty-year-old, all eyes were on him and his brothers as they injected their own brand of cool into the popular music scene. And to compliment the musical talents, they rounded off the package with an assortment of bellbottom slacks, platform shoes, and the icing on the cake, a nice floppy multi-colored Apple Cap.

 

Looking like a plush crown, the Apple Cap was a loose-fitting hat, divided into eight distinct triangular sections of fabric that formed a puffy shape similar in appearance to an apple. Each triangle was often of a different color, allowing for a flashy burst of colorful funkiness that screamed 1970s. And as the decade progressed, the Apple Caps just seemed to get bigger and floppier, often in direct proportion to the afros, pant flares, and platformed soles that accompanied them. Just about anyone who was anyone in the world of R&B and Funk during the freaky-fashion decade proudly wore an Apple Cap at one time or another.

 

And as the retro styles of the 70s made a comeback a few decades later, so did the Apple Cap – this time embraced by the hip-hop crowd, who managed to incorporate a whole new palette of geometrical designs, bold colors and vibrant velvet fabrics into the mix. But while the new versions had a funky flash all their own, they still looked out of place in an era that just didn’t have the same grasp of cool as a time when Michael and his four brothers taught the world the meaning of the word “funk.”