(Watch "Icon Redux: James Dean @ Hotel Gansevoort" to get the frontstory for this backstory.)

“He doesn’t really look like James Dean,” says the woman at the cowboy hat store. We’re standing watching Yann Bean make James Dean faces into the store mirror a few yards away, tipping the hat down over his face, furrowing his brows. Tomorrow he’ll try to fill the shoes of one of the most iconic actors in history. Today he’s trying to fill his hat.

“That’s not really the point,” I answer back.

“Oh,” says the woman. She puzzles over it a few seconds longer, then gives up considering what the point could be, giving herself over instead to thinly-veiled admiration.

“Well,” she concludes, “he’s definitely got something anyway.”