Warfield Island Hats, 1,2,3

These are hats I made in January 2023, as part of Fun-a-Day Los Angeles, and also inspired by #FashionFictions on Instagram. Along with making the hats, I made a faux ethnographic report about them, as if they were artifacts of an island culture under quarantine. I'll add the text of that to individual photo descriptions, but here's the introduction:

Ethnographic Reports on Warfield Island

Appendix 3:
Hat traditions on Warfield in the Quarantine Years

Introduction: “Warfield Island” (not its real name) is a small island which has declared itself to be under quarantine, not because of any illness in the inhabitants, but to protect themselves from a pandemic in the outside world. The resulting isolation, including limited access to outside goods, has resulted in some specific adaptations in the island’s culture. In this appendix, several examples of this in the island’s material culture are discussed, specifically, the unusual hats worn by the inhabitants.

Note: Warfield hats are prized by some collectors, and have become somewhat known beyond the island. However, our team proposes that some of the reported “ancient folklore” surrounding these objects, as collected in oral histories and reproduced here, is probably intentionally fictional, created to entertain the teller while mocking the interviewer. Readers of this report should proceed with caution, understanding that the Warfield hat makers enjoy a prank-based storytelling practice.