My obsession with Stetson started early. Really early.

When I was young, I loved to rummage around my father’s closet. There were all kinds of cool things, like his Scottish kilt and bagpipes. But by far the coolest item of all, the one that absolutely mesmerized me, was my dad’s Stetson. He had been, for a while, a rancher in Colorado. And so, of course, he had a classic, beautifully broken-in, sweat-stained Open Road. Even though I was a child, I could tell this hat signaled something special: that he was the real deal, not just some faux cowboy dressing up. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to have one of my own.

There is literally not a picture of me since then in which I am not wearing a hat. I’m not sure why, but I’ve just always felt naked unless my dome was covered. (On the rare occasion that people see me without a hat, they are surprised I have a full head of hair, most having assumed my hat routine is to cover a bald pate.) Though this obsession has, over the years, taken various forms to reflect the culture of the time (like my beret phase), I eventually returned to my first love. After growing up in Colorado, I landed in Austin, Texas, in the mid-1970s and spent the better part of four decades marinating in southwestern culture—whether it was Texas Rangers or photos of LBJ, I was surrounded by Stetsons.

And so, I found myself returning to the OG Stetson my father wore, the ultimate classic, the Open Road. It’s the GOAT of western lids. The beauty of the Open Road is its simple elegance. It’s a humble hat, suitable for baling hay. Yet with a Cattleman’s crown and a thinner brim than most cowboy hats (generally 2 3/4 inches), it has an air of formality to it. The Open Road is a gentleman’s hat, a hat that can be worn with a suit, which is why it was also worn by so many commanders in chief—Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson—and why it’s been dubbed “the Presidents’ hat.”

My Stetson fit right in when I worked with George W. Bush, as he is, of course, a Stetson fan. Others I worked with like the late senator John McCain, would remark, “What’s with the goofy hat?” When I became the cohost of a documentary television series on American politics called The Circus, it was cemented as my signature. Of course, I needed different colors to match different outfits, which required hauling hatboxes around the country. There’s not a frame in the 130 episodes where I’m not wearing an Open Road.

Anytime I do television appearances, there is the online debate about whether it is proper to wear a hat indoors. It upsets purists like my mother, but at this point, I get more heat if I’m not wearing my lid. For the record, I do not wear one to bed (but Stetson, if you’re listening, if you made a sleep-friendly version, maybe?).

I’m not going to admit how many Open Roads I own, but let’s just say my wife owns fewer pairs of shoes than I have hats. For a while, I got heavily into custom jobs and a wide variety of colors. But, in the end after a lot of experimentation, I returned to the OG classic, The Stetson 6X Open Road. The original is still the best.

And to my amazement, the hat my dad wore seventy years ago has once again become the hat of choice all over the country, especially in hipster hotspots like Brooklyn.

Hats are here to stay! JFK kind of bucked tradition when he went hatless at his inauguration, but he couldn’t kill the appeal of the Open Road. It just goes to show that if you make something as iconic as Stetson Open Road, it will never really go out of style. In today’s culture, where there seems to be a premium on what’s new and different, it’s nice to know there is one iconic brand that has never changed and yet is more popular than ever.

Don’t change a thing, Stetson.

Excerpted from Stetson: American Icon (Rizzoli, 2025).