Reply To: Black knitted kippa?

I don’t think of velvet as neutral — doesn’t it signify either charedi or at least “frum but not yeshivish” (to the right of MO)? Would a MO or “centrist orthodox” Jew who wears velvet be seen as a wannabe charedi, showing off his supposedly higher level of frumkeit? I know of someone who stopped wearing a velvet kippa for more or less that reason.

Knitted kippas do seem to be pretty recent, and I’d definitely consider a colored or small kippa sruga to be indicative of MO, but a larger black knitted kippa seems a bit more ambiguous.

From old photographs I’ve seen, I’d guess that plain cloth (neither velvet nor knitted) may have been the most common type of kippa before recent times. But maybe velvet’s been common for a long time, I don’t know.

Interestingly, although black kippas are standard among charedim, a fair number of Chabadniks (though still a small minority) wear dark brown, dark red or navy blue velvet kippas.