What Hat Did Stevie Ray Vaughan Wear? The Story Behind the Iconic SRV Hat

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s hat style is based on the sombrero cordobés, a traditional Spanish flat-crowned, wide-brim hat. His custom versions, made by Texas Hatters, featured a stiff, flat top and structured brim that gave the hat its signature look.

Early in Vaughan’s musical career, he adopted berets & applejack hats as stylish stagewear, at least in part to hide his thinning hair.

Stevie’s early road manager & friend Cutter Brandenburg recalled a moment in the late 1980s where Stevie was frantic before a gig because he misplaced his beret. Cutter offered up his own black cowboy hat, which was too large for Stevie’s head. Stevie’s hat size was just 6 1/2. So they tied a scarf around Stevie’s head to make it fit.

Vaughan found the wide brim perfect, because it kept the bright stage lights out of his eyes. And the audience loved it. Stevie’s girlfriend Lenny loved it, too. She convinced Stevie’s manager, Chesley Millikin, to spring for a custom hat.

So Stevie visited hatter Manny Gammage at Texas Hatters, a family-run company that has been making hats since 1927. Texas Hatters became the primary source of Vaughan’s custom stage hats throughout his career. Vaughan was instantly drawn to the flat-crowned caballero called “The Plateau”.

Stevie reportedly liked that particular style of hat because his own hero, Jimi Hendrix, famously wore the same style hat.

So Gammage made him a custom hat, which Stevie began wearing in 1981. Gammage would continue to craft Stevie’s hats for the rest of the guitarist’s life, and apparently there were many. Gammage once joked that he made “hundreds” of hats for SRV, because the blues guitarist was always giving them away to fans and throwing them into the crowd.

The hat originally had a traditional ribbon circling the crown. But one day, Stevie’s belt broke, but appreciating the look of the belt buckle, he fastened it to the front of his hat and created his ultra-famous signature look.

Stevie Ray Vaughan wasn’t the hatter’s only famous client. Gammage also made the famous signature hat for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant, and his brother Donnie Van Zant of 38 Special. He made Burt Reynold’s hat in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, and a hat for Willie Nelson that now resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Texas guitar great Jerry Jeff Walker even wrote a song about Gammage, aptly called “Manny’s Hat Song”. In fact, he wrote two.

While Gammage originally called the hat “the plateau”, it’s become so synonymous with Vaughan that it’s more often simply called the SRV hat.