While I’ve found the perfect pants, socks, shoes, underwear and shirts, I was complaining to my girlfriend that I still haven’t found the right sunhat. The closest I’ve come is my olive green Outdoor Research sombrero. It’s lightweight and folds easily. It has the added benefit, because of its olive green color, of looking like a park ranger hat, and there have been several occasions when people have gotten my attention only to realize I was not a park employee.

The problem with that hat is that when the wind blows it somehow inflates to look like a 10 gallon hat, and anyone who knows me knows that the cowboy look is never anything I’d like to project. The other issue is that it has a fleece lining, so while that was nice when I endured cold, wet winters in the Pacific Northwest, it doesn’t really serve me well when traveling in the summer climates where I spend most winters now.

I need a wide brim to protect my neck from the sun, but it also needs to be foldable so I can stuff it into my bag. On a recent visit to Mexico, I noticed a growing number of those conical Vietnamese style straw hats. In fact, there was a guy just a couple blocks from our apartment in the upscale Polanco neighborhood who would sell them daily at the park. He spent the afternoons hand crafting them and cleverly displayed them on top of posts at the entrance to the park.

I tried one on once, and the only issue I had was that there was no way to secure it so that it did not get blown back when the slightest of breezes blew. Of course, there was the other issue of me walking around Seattle or San Francisco wearing one of these. I remember telling an employee at the Filson store in Seattle about my dilemma, and she said, “I know what you mean; I’m Vietnamese, and I don’t think I’d feel comfortable wearing that”.

Who knew so much meaning could be tied up in a hat? For her, she didn’t want to bring any more attention to being Asian, and for me, I didn’t want to appear to be participating in cultural appropriation, and let’s not even get into what would happen if I ran into a disgruntled Vietnam veteran.

So, I asked my girlfriend, what if I composed a wardrobe of things I’d purchased on my travels and, every day, shared the cultural story behind it. Finally, I came up with a way to justify my donning of another culture’s clothing. I was so inspired by the idea that the next chance I got, I headed over to the amulet market in Bangkok.

You often see Buddhists in Thailand wearing necklaces with one or more amulets dangling from them. The amulets have the purported function of bringing good luck, good fortune, and even fertility. There is a whole market for rare amulets, but most are mass produced and many are blessed by a Buddhist monk. The only way to be sure of getting a blessed one is probably to buy it at a temple, but not believing in anything supernatural, I was simply looking for something representative of the culture.

Being a designer, my amulets would have to be color and shape coordinated and look balanced around my neck. I realized that the first thing I needed was a lanyard from which to hang them. I wanted something simple and settled on one made of a string of black coral. It had three O rings which would allow me to hang a balanced number of amulets from it. Ironically, the lanyard ended up costing more than the three amulets I ended up selecting, but how do you put a price on fashion?

The next step was to find the amulets. I strolled the aisles looking at all the displays. Regularly I’d come across a collector looking at the amulets through a magnifying glass. I knew we wouldn’t be competing for the same thing as I had the goal of keeping my entire purchase under $10. The first I found was one of the most common images of Buddha. He was sitting cross legged with his hands over his eyes. While I tried to infer the meaning, the lady who sold it to me was of no help since she only spoke Thai. Still, I liked the sandstone color of the Buddha and the silver on the edge of the case that enclosed it.

It was hard to determine the pose of the next Buddha I found, but it was carved in stone that was a rainbow of colors, and I couldn’t resist. The last piece I bought was already one of my favorite Buddha images: Buddha meditating with snakes gathered above his head. Without knowing its meaning, one might think it to be something akin to Medusa and her head of snakes, but the story actually goes that one day the Buddha was praying and it began to rain. Several snakes reared up and joined above his head to protect him from the rain.

I asked the woman, from whom I’d bought the third amulet if she’d attach the amulets to the necklace. That way I could take them for a test run as I wore them all the way home. It was when I got back to the hotel that I learned that none of them would protect me from ignorance.

The girl at the front desk lit up when she saw the amulets. I knew she was a Buddhist, but I didn’t know how educated she was on amulets. She worked her way around the charms telling me the meaning behind each one, until she got to the last one, the Buddha covering his eyes. She gave me a puzzled look. She said “why you have this one? This one for a woman for keep out evil when she is having a baby” “That’s just great”, I responded, “instead of appropriating a culture, I had appropriated motherhood”.