Buffalo Bills Fans Embrace Iconic Water Buffalo Hats for Game Day Spirit
Building community with embroidery, textile arts and Bills Mafia “Water Buffalo” hats
Buffalo Bills fans have found a quirky, head-warming — and community-building — take on game day gear: Tall fuzzy, blue, horned “water buffalo” hats made by women immigrants and refugees at, Stitch Buffalo, a unique local textile arts center, have been selling strong this season. As the Bills wins keep coming and the team heads to the playoffs, fan zeal, and orders, grow. To keep up with demand for the $175 hats, a new sewist has joined the original hat-making trio of women from Burma, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
With sales close to 1,000 since the hat making started three years ago, the headwear inspired by the lodge hats of the 1960s-era cartoon character Fred Flintstone of Yabba Dabba Doo! fame has an enthusiastic fan base. “Something about putting that hat on that just makes you just feel happy,” said hat design creator, Water Buffalo Club 716 founder and life-long Bills devotee Therese Forton-Barnes. “It’s a great feeling when you have the hat on and knowing that it supports a couple of great causes.”
Revenue from the hats is income for women building new lives in Buffalo. As word about the hats spreads, along with fan photos, awareness and appreciation has been growing for the decade-old artisan collective and nonprofit at 284 Plymouth Ave. in Buffalo. There 125 women from 15 countries – from Bhutan and Egypt to Congo, Thailand, Peru, Bangladesh and Ukraine — earn biweekly paychecks ranging from $150 to $1,050. Their sewing work ranges from tailoring and custom sewing projects to making ornaments, Buffalo-love heart pins, garlands, pillows, embroidered jean jackets — and hats!
The spike in demand was helped by a short CBS spot during the game when the Bills defeated the Kansas City Chiefs: It showed fans wearing hats and the new, expanded Stitch shop and headquarters. “It’s very busy now,” said Dawne Hoeg, Stitch founder and executive director.
She’s grateful for the way water buffalo hats have created a welcoming connection between immigrants learning about their new home and Buffalo’s idiosyncratic football-loving community. “It’s really sharing the story of what Stitch Buffalo is to a wider community,” said Hoeg. “It’s just a beautiful, thoughtful relationship.”
The success of the hats, she said, has helped get the word out about Stitch and its mission to empower refugee and immigrant women. For Forton-Barnes, an event planner by profession, the hats have led to a mission of her own: A surprising, creative journey that has added to the fun of being a Bills fan.
She founded the Water Buffalo Club 716 in 2021 after doing what many fans do – coming up with a flashy fan outfit for a home game. After remembering the horned water buffalo fraternal lodge hats Fred Flintstone wore, Forton-Barnes decided to cobble together homemade versions for herself and a friend. As they wandered the stands of the Buffalo Bills Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, people kept stopping to ask for a photo and where they could get a hat like that.
Soon she was working on getting sturdier versions made in Buffalo. Someone recommended Stitch Buffalo. Now Forton-Barnes is club “Grand Poobah” and counts 6,000 members, a number she bases on an email newsletter list, social media followers and hat sales. Notable supporters include quarterback Josh Allen’s parents and Mary Wilson, widow of the late Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., founder of the Bills.
Hats and hatted club members have been seen at every game and on television nationwide. They’ve been in a commercial for Molson Canadian beer, as a feature on one of Fisher-Price’s Little People toys and on a mural at the club’s pre-game, tailgate headquarters, The Big Tree Inn, 4277 Abbott Road in Orchard Park.
Water buffalo hats have even gone beyond football. There are green ones for St. Patrick’s Day, rainbow ones for gay Pride, red ones for Buffalo’s Polish Dyngus Day and pink for breast cancer awareness. Forton-Barnes is now at work on one for the summer Italian festival.
“It’s just a matter of somebody’s imagination and we can help run with it,” she said. “My life has turned into hats.”
Yabba dabba… Go Bills!
Lead photo: The Water Buffalo Club at their tailgate headquarters, The Big Tree Inn at 4277 Abbott Road, Orchard Park, NY / Photo: Water Buffalo Club 716 (Facebook)
To learn more about the Water Buffalo Club and to purchase hats, visit:
waterbuffaloclub716.com
