Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

The Story of Two Roads Hat Co. Tracks the Evolution of Western Cool

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Jon Parrish was wading through the crush of the crowd on the way back to his booth when he saw her: Long and slender, with dark, curly hair, trying on one of his hats. It was 2018, Waco, Tex., and he was set up at the Magnolia Market at the Silos, a Chip and Joanna Gaines brainchild which draws 100,000 people over a typical weekend. Likely Parrish had seen thousands of women trying on the women’s-specific Gigi Pip hats, produced by a company he’d founded with his wife in 2015, but this woman was distinct. Something about her, her shape, the way she wore the Dahlia, a flat-brim felt number. And as he drew closer, she turned, and all was made clear: “She” was very much a very stylish “he” modeling what Parrish believed was a very “her” hat. But he caught himself thinking, That guy looks dope. “This is a hat that you wouldn’t find in Westernwear,” he says. “It was for men who don’t find that identity with traditional cowboy hats but they’re still hat-wearers.” Thus began his path to

Two Roads Hat Co.

, which launched on Black Friday 2020.

Related Guides

Recommended Videos

Parrish, a 35-year-old serial entrepreneur and Salt Lake City native with six companies to his credit, realized a truth that day that had been playing out around the country for previous three years as he hawked ladies’ hats: Contrary to most large-scale milliners, not every man wants to look like a cowboy. “Over the years [with Gigi Pip], we were dumbfounded with how many men were interested in our hats,” he says, remembering that if the smaller sizes didn’t immediately give it away, the giant sign that read ‘For the Women Who Wear Many Hats’ would eventually jog a realization. “It was like all of a sudden finding out your Gucci bag or your Roxy shorts were made for women,” he says, laughing. But it was undeniable that there was an intuitive attraction from guys to what was designed as women’s headgear. So what was it?

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gigi Pip hats — and now Two Roads Hat Co.’s offerings — “had a different twist to them than the hat companies of old,” he says. Others, he explains, were iconified in the American West. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with a shit-kicker hat. But for every man living on a farm, there are 10 browsing the local farmer’s market. Put another way, plenty of men love Quentin Tarantino movies, but few want to dress like an extra in one. “We hear this phrase all the time: ‘I love that. I wish I could pull it off,’” he says. “It’s because you’re not a horse-riding cowboy, but you love the hat they wear.” When it comes to something you’d actually wear, more and more men are looking for classic styles tweaked to the modern aesthetic, the same shapes seen on the heads of post-game NBA and NFL players during press conferences, albeit for thousands of dollars less. That’s the philosophy of both of Parrish’s companies.

Thanks to his wife, the popular blogger and Instagram influencer Ginger Parrish, Jon’s company Gigi Pip was already taking off among women, and it only spelled danger to dilute the brand to include a men’s line. Therefore, Two Roads Hat Co. was founded for the boys.

So what makes a men’s hat? Certainly the sizing increased, as men’s heads are generally bigger than women’s. But men, Parrish says, lean toward shorter, softer brims, while women prefer the fit and flex of Kung Lao’s. The sweat band also differs: Men, who tend to perspire more than women, need a more absorbent leather sweatband, while the one for women is made from a softer cloth.

But there’s a difference in Two Roads’ ethos, as well: Each model is named after need-to-know places around the United States and the world at large, capturing guys’ yearning for exploration and adventure. Four may feature SLC locales, but the company’s best-selling Echo Park takes its name after the legendary Los Angeles neighborhood, and places as diverse as the Amalfi Coast and Detroit are all repped.

If the model names were deliberated with care, the company name was even more debated, and Parrish claims it was a year of back-and-forth with his company’s future president until they settled on Two Roads, an allusion to Robert Frost’s famous poem, “The Road Not Taken.” “[The phrase] was one of those terms that just identified,” he says. “[After,] things just started fitting into place.”

Approaching six months into his brand’s existence, Parrish is optimistic. All of the mistakes he made with his women’s brand informed his choices with Two Roads, and one must think that being a man himself, the closer relationship with its target demo can’t hurt. The shoulder seasons are traditional hat-buying months, and the trends follow a basic formula: straw in spring, felt in fall. He’s aware that men who have been hat-curious but turned off by the Western nature of many hatmakers may approach with fear and trembling. But he’s quick to encourage. “If you’re a hat-wearing person,” he says, “you can wear hats.”

Jon Gugala
Features Writer
Jon Gugala is a freelance writer and photographer based in Nashville, Tenn. A former gear editor for Outside Magazine, his…
Why United By Blue, An Outdoor Clothing Brand, Wants Your Local Waterway’s Trash
United by Blue cleanup

As you read this, two continent-sized expanses of plastic float placidly in the Pacific Ocean. Trash moves between them on an interstate-like current, and every day 38 million more pounds make its way into the saltwater. Fisheries are nosediving, beaches look more and more like garage sales instead of postcards, and Flipper was harpooned by a Japanese whaler. And yet against this seemingly hopeless situation, United By Blue
, a Philadelphia-based outdoor clothing brand, is baling water from a figurative sinking ship with a bigger and bigger bucket while simultaneously trying to recruit others to do the same before the whole thing goes down.
Meet The Founders of United Blue

Mike Cangi, with fellow cofounder Brian Linton, uses that far-looking, aspirational rhetoric that usually precedes a sex scandal. But the company’s moves have always been hyper local when examined with a close-enough lens. Linton spent his childhood in Southeast Asia, seeing firsthand the effect of polluted oceans and trash-strewn beaches, and Cangi grew up surfing Philadelphia's nearby Jersey Shore. With their first business, which preceded UBB, the pair donated five percent of the company’s profits to ocean conservancy, which vanished like a drop of water in, well, the ocean. “It was really hard to measure, to feel like we were making a difference,” Cangi says. “We wanted to get our hands dirty, literally and figuratively, and do our own good work.”
“We are all connected by the world’s water,” says cofounder and United By Blue brand director Mike Cangi, sounding very much like an aquatic version of a yoga instructor. “Every body of water is within our scope.”
So in 2010, the pair founded United By Blue. While the company’s desired effect of ocean conservancy may have been similar to the first business's iteration, its model was radically different. Rather than writing a check and adding a blurb to its website, the company instead adopted the cause in-house, internalizing waterway cleanup and preservation by hiring the personnel themselves. Of course, volunteers have been critical to its core mission — over 13,000 have given time in 300 events across the 48 lower States — and the company also funds large-scale cleanups executed by professionals with specialized equipment in remote and sometimes dangerous locations. (To date, its collective efforts have netted more than 3.5 million pounds of trash, and it continues to pledge that for every product sold, one pound of trash will be removed from local waterways.) But UBB’s initiatives start in its Philly office by employees whose job descriptions read more like Greenpeace than green space.
How Does Trash Get Into Our Water?

Read more
This All-American Boot Brand Prepares Men of Color to Step Out into the Great Outdoors
season three brand profile 0

Established in 1890, California’s Yosemite National Park has awed visitors for generations. Whether looking out from the Tunnel View, down from Glacier Point, or up from the meadow at El Capitan, its vistas are expansive, uniquely American. Yosemite is the proper definition of a national treasure. Jared Ray Johnson has never been.

Related Guides

Read more
Jaden Smith and Coco Gauff Celebrate Black Voices in New Balance’s Collection
jaden smith coco gauff front new balance campaign 0

There's a lot we love about New Balance, including its commitment to Made-in-America craftsmanship from its hometown of Boston, Mass. But its Black History Month campaign, which will be available online and in select retail stores on February 15, has got us more excited than ever. Partnering with some of the brightest lights of the next generation, its My Story Matters
campaign features two of the most exciting young Black Americans with voices that resonate far and wide. Renaissance man Jaden Smith (son of Will Smith) and tennis phenom Coco Gauff front the company's latest capsule, which features limited editions of two of its most iconic shoes and fresh, inclusive apparel.

Related Guides

Read more