We found the inventor of the Rizla hat, festival season’s most vital acc-sesh-ory

It’s three in the morning, you’re in a forest on the outskirts of a rural village that only people who grew up within a five mile radius have heard of; and your favourite DJ is currently laying down a set for the ages. As the music ramps up, your serotonin levels are peaking, pleasure rushing through your veins, every inch of your body tingling. It’s a perfect moment.

A slight nicotine craving cuts through the bliss, and you plunge your hand into your pocket, scrabbling around for that rectangular cardboard pack of papers. Shit, all out. Your eyes dart around desperately to your peers, but hands pat empty pockets and gesture apologetically into the air. Panic begins to set in. The queue to get back into this arena means leaving isn’t an option, unless you want to spend the remainder of the night alone. The perfect moment has been broken.

Then you see it. Like a mirage at first, but after several eye rubs the vision remains. It’s real: a figure wearing a bucket hat decked in Rizla has wandered into your path, like a guardian angel descending from sesh heaven. Gathering yourself, you approach. “Can I...,” you falter, voice trembling, emotions brimming, “...can I have a Rizla, mate?”. “Of course, mate,” the figure responds, smiling maternally.

Said figure is one of many people who have stunned revellers across the festival calendar this summer by gluing packs of Rizla onto a bucket hat and wearing it in the dance. It doesn’t sound like much, but in these troubled times we cling to hope where we can find it, and this act of charitable altruism, helping your fellow raver out of a distraught situation with no want of reward, has become a beacon of dance music community spirit. Mother Teresas of partying, trading the religious habit for bucket hats. Humanitarians of the sesh.

Or, y’know, it’s just pretty jokes, innit?

Either way, Rizla bucket hats have become a viral sensation in 2017, springing up at events across the UK. The movement really seemed to get going at Houghton festival in Norfolk, at which a Rizla bucket hat wearer was the talk of the dance. And following a post on popular meme account Ketflix & Pills, the world took notice.

We tracked down the Houghton attendee and possible inventor of the Rizla bucket hat, Henry Senners, who first rode out the acc-sesh-ory back in 2016, to trace the beginnings of the movement and ask what’s next.

We also spoke to Stewart Eagers, who donned a Rizla bucket hat earlier this month at Forbidden Forest, and went viral again after we posted it and is now getting invited to clubs as a VIP, to explore what makes a Rizla bucket hat wearer tick.

Check the Q+As below.