Matheus Gustavo arrived for his second day of work at a hat shop in Rio de Janeiro wearing a black New York Yankees cap. His new job, for the most part, was selling Yankees hats. On the displays around him, about three out of four caps promoted that baseball team in the Bronx.
Yet Mr. Gustavo had a confession. He had worn a Yankees hat for years, he said, “but I never knew the real reason for the NY.”
When told the Yankees were a baseball team, the 23-year-old looked unimpressed. “Ah,” he responded. “It’s more about soccer here.”
That is an understatement. In Brazil, soccer is life, and baseball confounds. But a few days in any of Brazil’s metropolises or beyond will make clear that, regardless, the Yankees cap is perhaps the country’s hottest headwear.
It is ubiquitous on the beaches of Rio, and in the bars of São Paulo. It was perched on the heads of some right-wing protesters demanding a military coup to oust Brazil’s leftist president. And last month, it hung from a tree, torn and muddied, at an illegal gold mine deep inside the Amazon rainforest.
Just don’t expect many Brazilians to understand what the hat means.
“It’s American football? Or is it a brand?” said Carlos Henrique, 20, hawking Yankees caps off a metal rack he was carrying on Rio’s Ipanema Beach. Either way, it was his best seller. “I just know it calls attention,” he said. “And it looks good on everyone.”
More than any other sports paraphernalia, the Yankees cap has become its very own fashion trend, unmoored from the sport or the team it represents. Lifted by starring roles in hip-hop videos, celebrity endorsements and collaborations with Gucci and Supreme, the hat has gone fully global, crossing borders to lands where mentions of Babe Ruth and Aaron Judge will elicit blank stares — never mind trying to explain the “Evil Empire.”
This week, the Yankees start playing meaningful baseball once again, and Yankees fans in New York will pull on the caps to show their allegiance. But to many others in places like Brazil, China and Nigeria, the interlocked NY insignia will remain simply a classic piece of Americana, a status symbol, or a generic — perhaps chic — emblem of the West.
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“The logo is super stylish and, I think, sophisticated,” said Natalia Monsores, 40, while checking out a wall of Yankees hats in a luxury-mall shop owned by New Era, the Buffalo, N.Y., company that makes the official Yankees caps. “It’s the symbol of the brand, right? New Era,” she replied when asked what the logo meant. “You’re sending a sign: ‘I’m wearing something quality.’”
Isabel Cunha, 26, an ad professional in a Yankees cap eating breakfast in Rio, admitted that she, too, was not quite sure what she was wearing. “I think it’s pretty,” she said. When told it was a sports team, she replied, “basketball?”
Artur Regen oversees Brazil for New Era, Brazil’s largest — and, he said, only — licensed Major League Baseball hat seller. “Ninety-eight percent of Brazilians don’t know it’s a baseball team,” he said. “New York is cool and they want to be associated with it.”
