Rob Martinez, 30, sat near the back of the Exclusive Fitted store in the Queens neighborhood of Jamaica, in front of a wall of hats.
Martinez was dressed like a true New York sports fan and creative. His black coach’s jacket was part of the New York Mets’ City Connect collection. His custom dirty denim Nike trainers were decorated with blue and orange swooshes and two logos that he designed — one that meshed Queens with the Mets and the other with the New York Knicks. And, of course, a limited edition 59Fifty poker chip Mets hat.
This was where his dream had begun. Every day, he would drive to the store on 165th Street, just off Jamaica Avenue, to see the new hats that had come in. He soon became obsessed. His collection has now grown to over 200 — a number high enough that he struggled to recall his first hat, which was a green New York Mets hat with a purple and white logo, and a floral underbrim. He said he got it at a different store on nearby Jamaica Avenue.
“Something I’ve never really even seen at any other store,” said Martinez.
Martinez, who is known on Instagram as “@hatsofqnz,” is a Queens-based hat collector turned hat designer. After coming to the store so often and seeing the available designs and colorways, he thought it would be cool to one day design his own hat.
During the pandemic, while he was watching videos of hat stores on YouTube, Martinez didn’t see a ton of Mets hats. And the Mets designs he did find in stores, he found underwhelming. He thought he could mix the logos and colors to create something different.
“I was looking for stuff I couldn’t find,” said Martinez. “That’s when I had that inspiration, to create something different and something that was more my taste.”
It’s this constant search for the one-of-a-kind that fuels Martinez’s design process.
His canvas is the New Era 59Fifty fitted silhouette. His inspiration is New York sports — mostly the Mets, where his allegiance lies, and occasionally the Knicks, a team rooted deep in the culture of the city. But almost every hat he’s created has an element that pays tribute to his home borough of Queens.
Martinez shuffled through the selection of hats he’d brought. One featured the rarely seen Mets’ 1993 and 1994 road uniform “New York” script and the club’s 60th-anniversary patch, recolored in the Knicks’ predominantly orange lettering. Martinez said this design was inspired by Carmelo Anthony’s 60-point game on January 24, 2014.
Another, which was for now a one-of-one sample and hadn’t yet been released to the public, featured the same “New York” script on the front, but in white with an orange outline. On the side was a custom Mets logo, with “Queens” replacing the club’s nickname.
But nothing screamed “Queens” more than Martinez’s newest design: the white hat with the black brim.
On the front was a custom copper and blue “NY” logo in a newspaper wordmark font. Martinez said this was inspired by the New York Times’ printing facility, which is located in Queens. A green Queens street sign is on the side, and a scripted Queens logo on the back.
“A logo like this,” Martinez said as he held up the hat, “we would need to submit for approval with New Era. Once it’s approved, we’re able to submit the design and get it done. But sometimes stuff like this isn’t approved.”
The most difficult part of the design process, he said, was ensuring that the hats were printed exactly the way he envisioned them.
“Being able to share that art the way that you initially saw it,” said Martinez. “So that it comes out exactly how you saw it. That’s part of why I love the process.”
Martinez is early in his career as a designer, and his main focus for now is building his brand. Maybe one day, he said, he’d make this his full-time career and open his own store, like the one-off Jamaica Avenue he’d been coming to for years. For now, his plan is to just keep designing.
He’ll always stay true to his roots in Queens. This was the borough he’d grown up in, the borough that inspired his work, and the borough that had carried him this far. Wherever Martinez goes, there will always be an element of Queens with him.
“When it comes to Queens,” said Martinez, “everybody from any walk of life, there’s something here for them. To have found something like this where I’m from and see other creators in this space trying to collaborate and realizing that everybody’s here to be themselves and have their own style, it’s really the dopest feeling.
“Everyone has their own style and unique way of creating. Queens is known for that.”
