My son gave me a New Era cap for Christmas—not just a present, but a push: stop talking about the idea and make it.
So I took it to the bench and built the first Touring Cap on it.
It was wrong.
And it worked perfectly.
The chin-strap was borrowed from a military dress cap. It looked convincing but using it revealed the problem. Moving between brim and chin positions relied on a sliding adjustment that was too slow for the way I wanted the cap to be used.
The fastenings confirmed the same lesson. The side buttons were sewn into the cap, hanging on thread. They belonged to a different system. A Touring Cap needed a fixing that felt deliberate, secure and repeatable.
Prototype 001 didn’t fail.
It reduced uncertainty.
From that point on, the direction was clear: a buckled leather strap that kept its adjustment, and press studs that allowed it to move between resting and driving positions in seconds.
Every prototype since has been built on that lesson.
