When Pharrell Williams stepped onto the stage at the 56th Grammy Awards in 2014 to accept the award for Record of the Year, it was not only his music that commanded attention. Perched atop his head was an oversized, sculptural felt hat whose proportions defied the sleek minimalism of the fedoras and baseball caps that had dominated popular style for decades. Wide-brimmed with a crown swelling upward, the piece was instantly recognizable as a creation of British designer Vivienne Westwood. Within hours, images of the hat had ignited a social media frenzy, its bold silhouette circulating across news outlets, fashion blogs, and countless memes.
For casual viewers, the hat may have seemed a quirky flourish or an instance of celebrity eccentricity. Yet for those versed in fashion history or hip-hop culture, it carried decades of layered significance. It recalled the subversive energy of Westwood’s early 1980s collections, the transatlantic dialogue between British punk and New York hip-hop, and the enduring practice of reimagining historical garments for contemporary expression.
Westwood, McLaren, and the Nostalgia of Mud Collection
The hat Pharrell wore that night was not a new creation, but a revival of a design first presented in Vivienne Westwood’s Autumn/Winter 1982–83 collection. Known alternately as Buffalo Girls or Nostalgia of Mud, the collection emerged from Westwood’s creative partnership with Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of the Sex Pistols and a tireless cultural provocateur.
Their inspirations were strikingly eclectic: the bowler hats and full skirts of Andean women, romanticized visions of the American frontier, and the loose, athletic silhouettes of the urban B-boys then emerging in New York City. Westwood’s team reportedly drew from photographs of Peruvian women wearing rounded hats and layered skirts while carrying infants on their backs. These visual references were transformed into raw sheepskin coats, layered garments in earthy tones, and oversized felt hats designed to evoke both the clothing of indigenous communities and a pre-industrial, mud-hued past.
The Buffalo hat—sometimes called the Mountain hat or Jelly-Mould hat was defined by its broad brim and exaggerated crown. Though structurally related to traditional fedoras or bowlers, its proportions rendered it sculptural, almost theatrical. Opened in 1982, the Nostalgia of Mud boutique in London showcased an eclectic mix of African-inspired patterns, American frontier references, and walls adorned with expansive world maps. In the social and economic unrest of early-1980s Britain, Westwood sought to challenge the consumerism of mainstream fashion by channeling what she saw as “authentic” or “primitive” aesthetics, though critics have rightly noted that this often slipped into cultural exoticism.
From London to Hip-Hop: McLaren, the Rock Steady Crew, and Buffalo Gals
McLaren’s interest in hip-hop was pivotal to the hat’s next chapter. In 1983, he released Buffalo Gals, a single recorded with the World’s Famous Supreme Team. Its accompanying video introduced many British audiences to the elements of hip-hop—scratching, breakdancing, and rapping while outfitting performers in pieces from Westwood’s Buffalo collection.
Members of the Rock Steady Crew, an influential breakdance group, appeared both in the video and in later films like Wild Style and Beat Street, wearing the oversized felt hats. Through these appearances, the Buffalo hat migrated from the experimental runways of London to the streets and stages of New York, aligning itself with the improvisational, style-forward ethos of early hip-hop.
This migration speaks to hip-hop’s capacity for remixing influences, freely adapting fashion from disparate origins and reframing it within its own cultural context. The hat became an early example of high-fashion meeting street style, less as a luxury status symbol and more as an irreverent, playful accessory with deep subcultural resonance.
Pharrell’s Discovery and Affinity for the Hat
Pharrell Williams, born in 1973, came of age as hip-hop grew into a global cultural force. As one half of The Neptunes, he helped define the sound of late-1990s and early-2000s pop and rap. His own style, merging streetwear and couture, often paid homage to designers who blurred the lines between those worlds.
In interviews, Pharrell has said he first encountered the Buffalo hat in a vintage shop, later purchasing a reproduction from Westwood’s World’s End boutique in London for around £95. The shop confirmed that the design remained in production decades after its 1982 debut.
Pharrell’s Grammy appearance was not the hat’s first public outing. He had worn it as early as 2009 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and in various colors at events and in music videos. But the Grammys offered an unparalleled platform. By pairing the hat with an Adidas track jacket, a direct nod to the B-boy uniforms of the 1980s Pharrell created an ensemble that consciously linked Westwood’s work to hip-hop’s formative years.
Viral Moment and Meme Culture
Within hours of the 2014 broadcast, the hat had become a meme. Comparisons to the Arby’s fast-food logo, Yosemite Sam’s cartoon headgear, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police spread across Twitter. Arby’s itself tweeted at Pharrell, “Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back?” A parody account, @PharrellHat, gained thousands of followers by “speaking” as the hat.
While much of the commentary was humorous, the media attention also revived interest in Westwood’s original collection and its historical references. Articles in GQ, Grazia, and other outlets traced the design back to Peruvian bowler hats, punk-era London, and McLaren’s Buffalo Gals video. This coverage sparked discussions about cultural appropriation, fashion cycles, and the ways subcultural artifacts reemerge in new contexts.
Philanthropy and the Arby’s Purchase
Rather than shy away from the attention, Pharrell leveraged it for philanthropy. In March 2014, he auctioned the hat on eBay to benefit his educational charity, From One Hand to AnOTHER. The winning bid of $44,100 came from Arby’s, which displayed the hat at its headquarters as a tongue-in-cheek brand trophy.
In 2023, the Baltimore Museum of Art tracked the hat down for inclusion in its exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century. Displayed alongside paintings, garments, and installations, the hat was recontextualized as an artifact of cross-cultural exchange, its meme-era notoriety reframed within a broader story of music, art, and design.
Materials, Craft, and Historical Context
Though it is firmly situated in Westwood’s punk oeuvre, the Buffalo hat’s construction draws from centuries-old hat-making traditions. Made of felt created by matting and pressing animal fibers it recalls the high-quality beaver, rabbit, and nutria hats once produced in places like Danbury, Connecticut, before mercury-based felting processes were outlawed in the 1940s due to health hazards.
Westwood’s version is crafted without toxic chemicals, its distinctive crown and brim shaped through steam and pressure. The exaggerated form functions both as homage to the felt hat’s sculptural potential and as a tongue-in-cheek subversion of traditional millinery. Pharrell’s embrace of it connects these historic crafts to contemporary fashion’s global stage.
