A letter from a customer

Everything in my closet was chosen. The baseball cap just turned up. This is a letter about the free one I chose

Six things this free cap gets right that nineteen years of ball caps never did, from a man who paid nothing for it and would now pay full price for it.

Colin Hartley · Customer · Wilmington · 5 min read

I am 61, I spend money on good things, and I will start with an admission. Everything in that closet was chosen. I spent a month on the boots alone. The jacket took longer. Even the watch took three weeks. And the cap on my head, which I put on every single day of my life, is a freebie ball cap from a bank opening in about 2007 that has never left. I never chose it. It turned up, and it stayed, and I am not sure any man in America has ever actually chosen his hat. So this is not a review. It is a man who finally chose, and paid nothing.

The cap I am writing about is the Denim Vintage Cap, from Ashford & Sons in Baltimore, a workshop that has been making caps by hand since 1958 and is now giving them away. I first saw it on my brother-in-law Dean at a cousin's wedding in June, and when he told me he had paid nothing but the postage I laughed at him, and when the workshop later asked if they could put my letter up for other men to read, I said yes, on one condition only.

Mine, on my own head now. I assumed Dean paid plenty. He paid the postage only.

Here is what nineteen years of free ball caps taught me. A man's hat lives in two states. Yanked off in the lot, because it makes me look like a kid. Or worn in public by default, somebody else's logo and all, because you were already late going out the door. Somewhere along the way I accepted that the only free thing I owned would be the one seen first, and that was that.

I chose the boots, the jacket and the watch. The one thing men see first came free with a bank account.

This cap cost me nothing and is the first one I ever owned on purpose, and having worn it, packed it, rained on it and crushed it, I can tell you it comes down to six things.

The morning it arrived. Free, and it came out of the box soft.

2

The shape is low, not a costume

The crown sits low and flat instead of puffing up, so there is nothing of Peaky Blinders about it at all. I wore it to work, to the range, to dinner, and nobody said a word. The ball cap had two looks as well. Young, and younger.

The crown, close up, with the curved brim below it. It sits low and it gets asked about.

★★★★★

There is no angle on it that reads as costume. My wife said it suits me, which never happens.

Gerald F., Akron

3

It does not leave a mark

No plastic strap in back, no screen print inside, nothing pressing a line across my forehead. The brim sits above my glasses instead of resting on the frames, which anyone who has driven two hours in a ball cap and squinted the whole way will appreciate.

The lining and the buckle at back. No print, no seam, no sweat line.

★★★★★

Wore it eight hours through an airport and never took it off to rub my head.

Marvin S., Boise

5

It goes with the clothes I already own

Plain, no logo, no name anywhere on it, which means it goes with the jacket and the boots I paid for. When the occasion sits between a ball game and a funeral, the cap works. The ball cap never managed that.

Bench, keys, gloves. It sits there with the rest of my working gear.

★★★★★

Wore it to my nephew's wedding and then to the hardware store Saturday. Nobody blinked on either of them.

Curtis L., Erie

6

Six colors, and thirty-eight caps

Denim blue for the weekend, coal black for the evening, field olive for the yard work. And every last one of the thirty-eight is going out for free. There is a herringbone wool one I have had my eye on for the winter, which is how these things go, apparently.

Mine, and the herringbone one I will be ordering the minute this ships.

★★★★★

Ordered the denim first and went back for the olive. The best hats I own now.

Norman J., Dubuque

This cap, against the one that just turned up

No man chooses his hat on purpose. That is the problem. One arrives, somehow, and stays for years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the catch

The cap is free, and it was $79.95 last month. You cover the shipping out of Baltimore, and that, I am told, is the whole deal.

I do not believe in free and I will not pretend otherwise, so I will pass on what Walter told me, which is that he is moving to a bigger workshop next week and will not load 2,847 finished caps into a moving truck. His words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that the postage cost me less than a lunch out, and that Dean has since taken two more.

I do not trust free offers, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over two thousand of them, sitting at 4.3 stars, which sounded like real men, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other men's words.

On my head most days. Ball cap went in the donation bin, nineteen years of service, no tears shed.

If the cap on your head also turned up free one day and stayed, this is the one I would put in your hands myself, while Walter still has any left.

Colin

ASHFORD | DENIM VINTAGE CAP

★★★★☆ 4.3 out of 5 from 2,300+ reviews

$79.95 FREE

You pay the postage. Walter pays for the cap.

• ✓Fits any head with a metal buckle
• ✓A low, flat Ivy shape that reads sharp, never costume
• ✓Soft washed denim, no break-in
• ✓No inside print, no headache, no red mark
• ✓No logo anywhere, so it goes with everything
• ✓Six colors, one size · full 90-day money-back guarantee included
• ✓FREE cap · you cover shipping only

Claim A Free Cap While They Last

Workshop moves next week, and every cap goes free. The popular colors go first.