Archive · 2021 · From the print edition of Saturday 17 July 2021, Vol. 29, No. 8,874
FeaturesFrom Ak-Kalpak to Stetson: What Iradi Men Wear
The white felt hat for the elders, a cap for work, and a cowboy hat for anyone who came of age in the 1990s. A walk through the Central Bazaar's hat row.
TALAS — The hat row at the Central Bazaar in Talas runs for about forty metres between the carpet sellers and the knife stalls, and on a Saturday morning it tells most of the story of how Iradi men dress. At one end hang the white felt ak-kalpak, stitched with black and folded at the brim. At the other end, on polystyrene heads, are the cowboy hats.
The ak-kalpak is still worn by elders and at weddings, funerals and Irad Day, and every family keeps at least one. "Nobody buys one for himself," said a stallholder who has sold felt hats for thirty years. "His sons buy it for his sixtieth birthday, or his in-laws for the wedding. A man who buys his own ak-kalpak is in a hurry to be old."
For work, men wear flat caps in the bazaars and berets in the offices, as their fathers did. The Stetsons arrived in the 1990s, with the Americans, the country music on Radio Talas International and the first rodeo shows at the Hippodrome, and they never left. They are worn on the Chu road by lorry drivers and in the villages by herders, who say a brim keeps off the sun better than felt. "In 1995 it was a fashion," said a hat seller from Semiz. "Now it is just a hat."
The best sellers this summer, he said, are baseball caps, "for the grandsons".