30 Years of the Adventure Hat: The Story Behind the Icon
Angeline Lacy is the founder of Sunday Afternoons and the woman behind the sewing machine. She built the company alongside her husband and co-founder Robbin, starting with a pile of fabric scraps and a lot of feedback from customers at arts and crafts festivals. This is her story of how the Adventure Hat came to be.
"That will never sell!" was co-founder Robbin's response when the first renditions of the Adventure Hat came out of the sewing room. Too late, I had already made about 50 hats with the help of a small group of seamstresses.
The Original Adventure Hat was not born in a single afternoon. It began taking shape over the entire summer of weekly arts and crafts festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1994. We entered the market with a simple bonnet-style hat called the "Sun Drizzle," sewn from the fabric scraps of Adventure Blankets that had been piling up on the sewing room floor.
A small sewing facility in Southern Oregon had been producing those blankets for us, and our partnership helped support a group of talented seamstresses in an economically depressed community. Their skill and care helped us bring well-made products to the world and gave us the foundation we needed to grow.
Each week, we packed up our newest rendition of the Sun Drizzle and brought it to the arts and crafts shows in the Bay Area. It didn't take long to discover that California customers were on a mission: they wanted the perfect sun hat, and they weren't shy about telling us exactly what they needed.
The feedback came week after week, without fail. "My neck gets burned" led to us adding a neck cape. "I get too hot in hats" brought the mesh side panels. "I sweat in hats" inspired the sweatband. "It blows off my head" gave us the hat-tightening system and chin strap.
Those early years at craft festivals made us hat experts. We learned to perfect the cut, the comfort, the fit. Patterns were cut and sewn, rejected and recut, then sewn again. We experimented with fabrics like cotton, hemp, and nylon. We sourced trims that had never been associated with hats. We weren't satisfied until something truly perfect left the sewing room.
When a new rendition earned its approval, 100 samples were made and brought straight to the show. Before long, this process produced the Leisure Hat, a softer variation made in a range of colors, designed mostly for women, and one that would remain in our line for years to come.
As the summer of 1996 unfolded, we still hadn't made the hat. The soon-to-be Adventure Hat pressed on through its season of change.
And then, at last, it happened. The Original Adventure Hat was born in August of 1996, its design inspired by a river trip on the Klamath in the final weeks of summer. We had found the perfect closed-cell foam for a floating brim. We paired it with our 50 UPF-rated fabrics, added improved technical features, and brought it all together with custom-made machinery and a perfectly measured stitch length. The perfect sun hat was real.
The Adventure Hat was born from the best of both of us: Robbin's diligent sourcing of materials and trims, and my own deep love of sewing and making practical items. The final design earned a 13-Point Utility Patent. Its very first award came from Organic Gardening, which named it the Best Sun Hat. From there, it went on to sell worldwide and earn recognition that we never could have imagined in that little sewing room.
We are grateful to everyone who played a part in the Adventure Hat’s journey — from skilled sewers to early customers who shared feedback, and the wider community that encouraged our work. Their insights helped us understand what worked, what needed refining, and what people truly loved. The Adventure Hat celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and three decades later, we couldn’t be prouder.
