Brittany Cobb is publishing a coffee-table book with tricks and tips that acts as a guide for the hat obsessive and hat curious.
Photo/Flea Style; Michael Hogue/Staff Artist
If you’ve noticed the popularity of “hat bars” — a trend among young women in which customers design bespoke hats — you have Brittany Cobb to thank. The owner of the Dallas-based boutique Flea Style hatched the concept during COVID, when she was trying to figure out how to use the event space in her Frisco location.
“I remember coming up with the phrase ‘hat bar,’ and saying, are people going to get it?” says Cobb, 43. Her Frisco store had a liquor license, so her initial concept involved customers drinking at a bar, but the experience caught on so quickly that Cobb moved it to her other locations (she now has nine, including spots in Kentucky and Tennessee). The hats in question aren’t only cowboy hats — the store sells shorter brims like fedoras, and even trucker caps — but the Western style is the main attraction.
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The idea of customizing these hats with ostrich feathers, old matchbooks and vintage scarves pairs nicely with the Flea Style brand, which has been a bohemian mix of flea-market finds and chic new wares since the first store opened in 2018. But other stores have put their spin on the concept. Hat bars are part of the new West Village Kendra Scott store and the centerpiece of the Rancher Hat Bar on Henderson Avenue.
Cobb’s latest venture is How to Style a Hat, a coffee-table book with tricks and tips that acts as a guide for the hat obsessive and hat curious. “Part of why I wrote the book was to plant our flag in the ground and say, we are the original,” says Cobb. “If you wanna do this, here’s how.”
Dallas-based Flea Style founder and owner Brittany Cobb in her first mall store at Galleria Dallas, April 20, 2022.
Tom Fox/Staff Photographer
Cobb grew up in Southern California but came to Dallas in 2001 to attend Southern Methodist University and fell in love with the city. She worked in lifestyle journalism for a decade (including at The Dallas Morning News) before turning her talents to retail. She lives in the Park Cities, where she’s raising two children, 14-year-old daughter Landry and 12-year-old son Barrett. We talked about how Dallas finally embraced cowboy hats, novel uses for old railroad nails and how Miranda Lambert became a Flea Style fan.
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I grew up in Dallas in the ’80s, when the city was pretty anti-cowboy hat. Fort Worth had the folks who wore cowboy hats. Now I see cowboy hats all around the city. What changed?
I can pinpoint a few reasons. One is the popularity of shows like Yellowstone and its spin-offs. That classic Americana coming right in the thick of COVID, when we were yearning for a time of open roads and the Old West. I also think Dallas and Fort Worth have become more of a co-community, not so separate, and there’s been a huge resurgence in the Stockyards, which we’ve been lucky to be a part of [Cobb owns two stores there]. And of course pop culture influences like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which was huge for cowboy hats. Post Malone went from street style to rocking a cowboy hat.
For me, COVID had a lot to do with it. Trying to juggle my work and homeschool my kids, hats became an everyday staple. All you saw on my Zoom calls was me in a hat.
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And now you have a new book on hats. Looking through the pictures, I was struck by all the unusual items people decorate their hats with, like antique spoons. What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen someone use in the hat bar?
All those come from my stash, and I find some pretty funky things at flea markets. I found old paparazzi slides from the ’90s. They look like tiny Polaroids, and there are pictures of Tyra Banks and Meg Ryan. It’s cool to see people play with those. We’ve also been playing with old railroad nails. They’re really rustic, and they all have a number on them, and those numbers can resonate with someone. Maybe it’s the year you were born. Maybe it’s a lucky number. We’ve put so many crazy things on hats, I can’t even count them.
Still from “How to Style a Hat.”
Courtesy Abrams Publishing
Miranda Lambert wrote the book’s introduction. How did you swing that?
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She’s a friend of the brand. She’s part of a really cool music label called Big Loud, and with our two stores in Nashville, we’ve worked with her on different activations. She’s taken over our Frisco store twice for private events with the Country Music Awards. So I’ve been fortunate enough to hang out with her. For the foreword, I was thinking, who would be the best person to kick this off? She was my first choice. And she wrote the most beautiful foreword about the confidence a hat can bring.
What bothers you most about Dallas?
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I adore this city, but I do think there’s a hyper-focus on things like money and wealth and designer items, though I think that’s changing. We have a lack of places to escape in nature, so we can get distracted by business and lose sight of what matters in life. That’s our challenge to figure out. As a California girl, I also miss the beach.
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Last question. Tex-Mex or BBQ, and where?
That is so hard! Luckily there’s a Tex-Mex BBQ place I always go to, called Los Charros. They have queso with brisket in it. It’s heaven. But if you hold my feet to the fire to choose between those two, I’d say Tex-Mex. Nothing better than Tex-Mex with a margarita on the rocks with salt. As far as where I go, I don’t discriminate. I love it all.