About

Bass Pro Shops Hats are a type of mesh, single-color trucker hat or baseball cap produced by the outdoor sporting brand and retailer Bass Pro Shops, which was originally founded in 1972. While the hats have waned in and out of fashion over the years since they were introduced, in the early 2020s, the Bass Pro Shop Hat Trend propelled the headwear into viral online discourse as the hats became popularized within Gen-Z fashion, particularly through memes and TikTok videos. The trend emerged online sometime around 2020, with multiple YouTube and TikTok fashion creators referencing the trend that year, as well as comments in the media (particularly around December 2021 and continuing through 2022).

History

Bass Pro Shops was founded in 1972 and has sold hats since the beginning of its existence.^[9] The brand is typically associated with hunting and fishing and a more conservative or non-urban lifestyle. While the company's apparel has been referenced in meme culture in the past, most notably in the Ironic Fishing Memes trend around March 2019, the fashion trend associated with Zoomers first picked up steam in the early 2020s as people who did not fish started to wear them more often, even sparking accusations of cultural appropriation and comparisons to the work clothes or Carhartt trend among people who do not do manual labor.^[8]

Online posts joking about the original, redneck-style connotations of the Bass Pro Shops hat can be found in many social media posts from the first half of 2020. For example, a July 14th, 2020, tweet (seen below) by Twitter^[1] user @adamtyler drawing a connection between Bass Pro Shops hats and homophobia received over 1,100 likes over the course of a year.

Comedian Kurtis Conner posted a tweet (seen below) on March 4th, 2020 about how he received a hat “as a joke because I made fun of people who wear them” and now wore it unironically, receiving over 21,000 likes in two years.^[2] At this point, it seems that if the hat was fashionable among non-fisherfolk, it was fashionable in a highly ironic sense, as reflected in comments to Conner’s post which is, up until that point, the highest-performing post referencing the hat on Twitter.

While it's unknown who exactly started the unironic fashion trend or when, early online discourse surrounding Bass Pro Shop hats becoming a legitimate fashion trend among Zoomers surfaced online in late 2020. One such early example comes from fashion YouTuber Keezy TV,^[10] who uploaded a video on August 27th, 2020, that mentioned the Bass Pro Shops headwear becoming fashionable near the end of his video titled "Streetwear HAT FASHION TRENDS 2000 – 2020" (seen below). The video accumulated over 100,000 views in two years.

Online Presence

Bass Pro Shops Hats TikTok Trend

As the hats became popularized on TikTok in 2021, backlash emerged alongside their increasing online presence. Ethan Coen, a prominent YouTuber and head of h3h3 Productions, commented on the trend in a May 16th, 2021, tweet (seen below) accusing those who wore the hats of spending too much time on TikTok. The tweet received over 12,000 likes in the course of a year.^[3]

On December 3rd, 2021, TikToker bdbarnes posted a video where he interviewed young people on a college campus, asking, “What do girls think of the Bass Pro Shops hat?” The TikTok (shown below) received almost 2,000 likes over the course of a year and a half, and bdbarnes received a variety of answers ranging from disgust to reluctantly expressed attraction.^[4]

Mainstream media attention came in mid-December 2021 with publications like The Wall Street Journal writing articles about people who resold the $6 hats for higher prices.^[5]

Backlash to the trend also continued into 2022, as seen in a clip expressed by TikToker malcolmmahand1 on June 27th, 2022, (seen below) of himself calling Bass Pro Shops and requesting the company ask to see a fishing license before selling a hat in order to prevent non-fisherfolk from wearing them.^[6] The video received almost 5,000 likes and 64,000 views in a month.

A July 30th, 2022, TikTok post (seen below) by user glossygurl mocked men who wear the hats expecting female attention and received almost 70,000 likes and 330,000 views over five days.^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References