Happy Monday. With all of this crazy rain we here in the OBE newsroom thought it was the perfect time to talk shop this morning about one of our favorite topics – HATS.

Bevin and I have a love-hate relationship with the Winter gray. But, one thing that pretty much cures the rainy-day blues is a great hat for so many reasons including faves like:

1. The complete avoidance of the small child poking, growling and whining at you while you attempt to make your hair presentable in the morning.
2. The feeling that your cute factor remains high, even in the face of torrential downpour and an umbrella left by the front door.
3. A hat makes jeans and a t-shirt look like you thought about what to wear that day, even if it was the only thing clean.
4. People smile at you when you have a cute hat on.
5. We feel pretty.

So, we thought we’d combine forces this morning to give you the hot list of where to score some serious hat cuteness.

Here’s Bevin:

I adore hats. I always have. While I wear them all-year-round, I tend to have an extensive Winter hat collection. This time of year, it’s cold, windy, and wet around these parts and nothing keeps my noggin warm like a cozy toque. Toques of all sizes, color, brands, shapes, eco-friendliness, and style make up my growing collection of chapeaus.

While I do look for a practical hat, that factor doesn’t always make me love a hat. While there are important  elements like breathability, fabric, warmth, and function, a hat has to be funky to make its way onto my head. I’m a sucker for functional style and it can be done when it comes to hats. Yes, it can.

Luckily, the Comox Valley has many spots to search out fun and functional headgear. Here are a few favorite locations that serve my hat addiction (yes, I will be the first to admit that) well:

Bling Fashions– Over in the Safeway plaza, this funky shop has some amazing hats. Owner Courtenay Lund has great taste and her collection reflects just that.

Blue Toque Sports Swap– Paul and Salinas Laperriere have a great selection of gently used headgear. They also have some super cute locally handmade toques to keep the noggin of each family member toasty.

Ski Tak Hut – Over on 6th Street, these ski and snowboard specialists have an extensive selection of winterized hats for all occasions from a number of well known, well loved outdoor wear companies.

Valhalla Pure Outfitters – This 5th Street haven for the outdoor enthusiast in everyone is a great place to source out toques for all occasions, whether you want to shred the slopes in style or make some tracks with your snowshoes. They carry a variety of Winter-suited headgear with brands such as Orage, Marmot, Prana, Outdoor Research, Bula, Dakine, and Mountain Hardwear to name a few.

Winners– Yes, you have to look pretty hard but it is possible to find cool hats here. I’ve been lucky enough to grab hold of brands such as Delux and O’Neill.

While it’s incredibly easy to walk into a store, scope out and purchase a brand new hat, it’s often just as easy to hunt through our many second hand shops and score big. It requires a bit more patience, but if you keep your eyes on the prize you will surely score at least one skookum hat this season.

My turn:

I L-O-V-E hats. They come out a bit in the Summer. But, really the onset of the rainy-season is determined in my mind by when the big guns in the hat universe come out.

About mid-September I go rifling through my boxes to rediscover my happy place and then go in search of a few gems. There’s definitely a bit of a practicality factor in terms of warmth and coziness for hats to hit the trails with. Here’s where I’ve found my faves:

Thrift Stores: People give away the cutest toques - hand-knits and woollies are my fave. Rifling through the hat bins at Saint Vincent DePaul or the Cumberland Road Thrift Store have kept me in cozy toques the last few years.

Retroactive on Fifth Street: I totally dig their funky collection of head gear and often find something cute, stylish and cozy.

But, if I’m coming clean, I totally wear hats for the cute factor – and scoring funky hats that keep me from looking like a wet dog while out on business errands, at the grocery store or hanging out with friends is way at the top of my list.

I have a few cute hat hot spots that I regularly make the rounds of, like:

The Cottage Garden on Comox Avenue: She has the CUTEST hat collection and one of my absolute faves ever came from this diminutive home store in Comox.

Zellers/The Bay: The hat I have on in the above photo was a Bay score. The hat section at any Bay store is stellar, and Zellers is pretty good too. I could spend hours in there…

I’m also going to have to give Winners a plug, as their hat options are awesome from time to time… and now I’ve got some new headgear locales to scope out too (thanks to Bevin).

Happy hatting! May all of us feel cute and pretty thanks to the joy of accessorizing.:)

Where do you score your favorite hats? What makes the perfect hat to you? We’d love to hear from other hat-heads:)

Photo credits: Marieke Holtkamp, Bevin Clempson and Karen McKinnon