If you love a man or woman in a uniform, then you will love the crowds of them milling about Plaza Square in St. Petersburg, near the naval training academy (Admiralty). Both the men and women wear dark olive jackets embellished with red trim. The men top off the look with big, round concave hats that rise dramatically in front and frame their faces like halos. (Their shape reminds me of the asymmetrical bowls that trendy pan-Asian restaurants serve noodles in.) The men in the city’s police force wear similar hats, in black. The women soldiers and officers, rather sadly, wear peaked flight-attendant-style caps that don’t do justice to their powerful roles.
After arriving in Russia I was starved to see those things that were authentically Russian, and these hats struck me so. They’re modern, exotic, and old-school communist. Each time I saw a man wearing one I had to stop and stare and say a silent prayer in appreciation. It’s easy to sport a hat that’s practical (like a knit skullcap) or fashionable (like a baseball hat). But the men wearing these sloping-bowl-hats are going out on a limb, wearing an accessory, like a bustle or heels, that isn’t absolutely necessary and that requires considerable poise. In St. Petersbirg the men in uniform are participating hard in fashion.
