In the past few months, a surprising number of people have said to me, “Oh,
by the way, I’m going to Peru,” as if no further explanation were needed. One
thing I do know. While they’re there, they will probably buy a chullo or two,
one of those cone-like alpaca pan-Andean hats with earflaps. Judging from the
look of New York, a lot of people have been to Peru recently. Gone is the Afghan
pakol. Gone is the keffiyeh. This is the winter of the Andean hat.
If there’s a political statement in the chullo, it’s a little hard to
decipher. Perhaps it signals indigenousness, international-ness. But what it
mostly says is, I don’t care how I look as long as I’m warm. I’ve seen chullos
that look like one cup of a knit bikini top and some that make their wearers
look like mittenheads, complete with dangling strings. The other day I saw a
fur-lined chullo that looked as though it had eaten the elder George Bush’s
Russian hat. You can give a fedora a rakish tilt. You can wear a hoodie with
sinister élan. But it’s impossible to wear a chullo stylishly. It is to the
noggin what a golf club cover is to a 3-wood. It is a bag for the head.
In a way, seeing so many chullos in New York is a little like seeing so many
baseball caps on Peruvians and Bolivians — a token of our global inclusiveness,
like the Andean musicians you hear in the subways playing what you think is Paul
Simon but is really a Peruvian classic.
Perhaps the anti-stylishness of the chullo — its simple functionality — is
its politics. The fact is that really cold weather eclipses style. I see men and
women wearing earmuffs that look like noseplugs. They are clearly trying to keep
their hair kempt. It’s a lost cause. Your hair is not truly your own until
warmer days and higher humidity return. Until then, there is no better way to
get hat hair than a chullo.
VERLYN
KLINKENBORG
