We’ve all been there; losing that precious ring you were entrusted from your great grandmother, misplacing a scarf that your mother so kindly gifted you or in Matilde Converio’s case, losing an antique hat in a student union cafe. The fur trapper hat is still missing despite pleas with trendy students at Goldsmiths University of London, to give it up.
It’s said that bad things happen in threes, that was the case the day that Converio, 21, lost her hat. In one day, a package she ordered was delivered to her old address, her flight tickets were sent to the wrong email address, and then, to add insult to injury, she lost her hat. Matilde says, “It’s my life, I always do this.”
Converio said that her mum gave her the adored hat after she told her that she was on the lookout for one. Her mum replied, “Say no more” and clambered into their attic bringing down an old fur trapper hat with her. Converio’s mother told her that she had got the hat in Prague after the Soviet Union fell and had kept it in mint condition in the attic, suspecting it might come back into fashion one day.
In an attempt to find the now lost 30-year-old hat, art student Converio, utilised her Adobe Design skills to make a missing hat poster featuring a picture of her wearing the hat; stating the date and time she lost it in the SU – Thursday 8 February at 2pm. She plastered Goldsmith’s college campus with the poster to plead with students to return her hat.
Converio dwells on who might have her hat. “It’s very Goldsmiths,” she jokes, going on to imagining someone picking it up and saying, “It’s going to match my Jaded outfit.” Matilde wrote on the poster – in her own handwriting – “It’s my mum’s ” hoping that people might be more likely to make the effort to get it back to her if they knew her mum had given it to her – even, if it matched their outfit.
Converio says she used the missing hat as a pickup line when she saw a girl wearing a suspiciously similar one in a picture on her dating profile. She said she messaged the girl saying, “I had a hat like that once did you take it?” Converio says the girl played into the whole bit and said “Yeah, you’ll have to come and get it.”
When we discuss how she’s coming to terms with the loss Converio says, “I neglected thinking about it for as long as I could,” it’s a tale as old as time – pushing thoughts of lost family heirlooms to the back of our minds. We’ve surely all misplaced something that we still retrace our steps for years later. Playing out the moment you realised you lost it, and subsequently closing your eyes to visualise where it might be – only to draw a blank. Feeling that pit in your stomach every time the thought of it dances across your mind, taunting you as you brush your teeth or look out the window of the bus.
But you’ll be glad to know that Converio now has a replacement hat, “I didn’t even plan to get a new one. I was just at Deptford market, and I bumped into a similar hat.” Mathilde says, “it’s not the same as my original one, it’s not real fur, and it’s not from Prague,” but she’s made peace with it.
When asked if she’s nervous about her mum finding out the hats gone, and has since been replaced by a dupe, Converio says, “I think when she finds out, I’ll tell her about the poster, and this article and she’ll agree that at least a story came from it.”
So, there you have it, solidarity that we are all guilty of losing things – and that’s really the only comfort Snatch can offer our readers to soothe those recurring late-night thoughts of frustration. Long live those pesky objects that must have fallen between the floorboards, or behind the sofa but left us with a lifetime impression or, regret…
Pictures: Matilde Converio
Designs: Pius Bentgens