If you've looked at the Côte cap and wondered whether the scene on the patch is a real place, here's the straight answer. It's a photo I took on a disposable film camera, from a speedboat in Mykonos, Greece, on the way to Scorpios beach club. The painting we embroidered onto the hat is basically that exact photo, and everything in the frame was really there.
Every design we make starts from a real place and a real memory. That's been the whole idea since day one, but I've never sat down and told one design's full story from start to finish on this blog. Côte is the right one to start with, because it's the most literal moment we've ever put on a hat.
Two boats, one disposable camera
We were in Mykonos with a big group, big enough that one boat wasn't going to cut it, so we rented two speedboats to get out to Scorpios. And since it was two boats full of friends, it turned into a race. We raced them the whole way to the beach club.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, the scene lined up. Mountains behind us, yachts sitting out in the background, my friends right there in the frame. It looked like a great shot, so I grabbed the disposable and took it.
The thing about disposables, though, is that you can barely see anything through that tiny viewfinder. I honestly didn't know what kind of picture I'd taken. I pointed the camera at what looked good, pressed the button, and didn't think about it again.
I didn't know what I had until the film came back
That's what film does that a phone never will. There's no screen to check and no way to delete the bad ones on the boat. The picture just sits on the roll until you get it developed, and you find out what you actually captured much later, when the trip is already a memory.
When I developed that roll, the speedboat frame stopped me. It came out better than anything I could have set up on purpose, which is funny, because I took it half blind off the side of a moving boat. That one picture ended up carrying a whole design.
What does Côte actually mean?
Côte is French for coast, and it's pronounced like coat. It has nothing to do with a jacket. The name points straight at what's in the photo, the coastline, the mountains coming down to meet the water behind those yachts. Once you know where the picture was taken, the name explains itself.
The closest photo to painting design we have
Every Places Moments hat goes from a real photo to an original painting to an embroidered patch, and most designs shift a little on the way from the photo to the painting. Côte is the closest one to one, photo to painting, design we have. If you put the original picture next to the painting, it's basically the exact same image. It's beautiful if you really look at it.
It was part of our first drop, and it's still the design I point to when I explain what this brand actually does. We have new designs coming too. But Côte set the standard for how true to the original moment a design could stay.
Why the baseball cap is off-white and the trucker is navy
The Côte baseball cap comes in a color we call Isla Crema, an off-white. A light hat is an easy thing to reach for in summer, and this one quietly turned into a lot of people's favorite. I just think the colors sit beautifully against that crema base.
The Côte trucker went the other direction on purpose. Truckers always look best in dark colors, so I wanted a dark navy like the ocean, and that became Indie Blue. You can really see that navy shine off the mesh, and it fits the design, since the whole moment happened on the water.
The people in that photo are my friends
Here's the part most people don't know. Plenty of people see the Côte artwork, think it looks cool, and leave it at that. What they usually don't realize is that it actually happened. The people in that photo are my friends, and on the other side of the camera was me, with more of my friends. It's a real memory that I happen to be able to hand to you with a brim on it.
That's also why I don't call these souvenir hats, and I never will. You don't need to have been to Mykonos, or anywhere near a speedboat, for Côte to be your hat. What you're wearing is a piece of original artwork that came out of a moment that really existed, and I think you can feel that in the design even if you never hear the story. The story just makes it better.
Where to find the rest of the stories
We keep the story behind the designs on the site, and I'm going to keep telling more of them here, one design at a time. And if Côte has been sitting on your list for a while, both the baseball cap and the trucker are live right now at $65. The crema one still reads like summer, and the navy one still looks like the water we raced across to get to Scorpios.