Alex Mroz of Goorin Bros - He Spoke Style In Good Company, Ep. 1

Because we live in such a fast-paced, super connected world, I think there is a desire, especially in menswear, to get back to a simpler time. And few accessories symbolize the good old days more than the right hat. No one understands that better than my friend Alex, shopkeeper at the Gorin Brothers Hat Shop in the West Village. So the thing I hear most often about people when it comes to hats is, I just can't pull it off. Yeah, we hear that all the time here. Your great-grandfather, my great-grandfather, they would never leave the house without wearing a hat, right? It's akin to you and I walking out of the house without pants. You've never done that? No, not when I was sober. And then certainly by our father's generation, the hat shop had virtually disappeared from neighborhoods. Well, now what's happening is that people have renewed interest in the hats, but they have never tried on a variety of shapes and styles and sizes. So they're going into apartment stores, which has very limited sizes. They're trying on hats, trying on maybe one or two styles, and they're not fitting or doesn't look right. And they're thinking, not for me, doesn't work. Now, when you first walk into a hat shop like this, you're just overwhelmed with all the amazing options. I think that hat looks amazing. This one looks amazing. I could totally pull that one off. This one would make me look completely ridiculous. How do you guide someone who walks into a shop and might just be completely overwhelmed? A lot of it is getting used to looking at yourself in the mirror wearing a hat. That is a foreign look to a lot of people. Sometimes I get dressed in the morning. I look in the mirror. It might be a good outfit. But then I think, like, no, there's this one thing missing. And I put the hat on, and it's like, bam. You know, there it is. And a hat's a commitment, too. It's not, you know, you're not dipping your toe in the water. Once you put that on, you always have a reaction to a hat, particularly if it's the right hat. Now, the one you fitted me for, the Panama hat that I love. I wear it all the time. I really feel like that is my hat. It really completes my summer looks. It's going to be fall. Let's pick out a new fall hat. Let's go check them out.