About MELASA

What MELASA makes

Start with the hat most people know us for: a knit beanie with a light in the cuff. On our first LED beanie the light has four bulbs, three brightness levels and up to 120 lumens, it charges from a USB port, and it pulls out of the knit so the hat can go in the wash. It comes in 42 colors, from black and navy to tie dye and herringbone, because a hat with a light still has to be a hat you want to wear to the store.

Around it sit six more shelves. Kids LED beanies, cut smaller, with a pom-pom or a plain cuff. Reflective beanies, some with a light and a stripe that runs all the way round, some with only the stripe. Winter skull caps and helmet liners, thin fleece caps that sit under a bike helmet or a hard hat, several with slots that let the arms of your glasses through. Balaclavas with a face cover you can pull down to drink. Cooling skull caps, do-rags and mesh liners for the summer, a few with a shade that hangs over the back of the neck. And eye gear: slip-on side shields for everyday glasses, and goggles that fit over them.

Questions about a style go to lightdesk@themelasa.com, and the MELASA catalog desk answers them.

Who wears it

You, most likely, at one of a handful of moments. The dog needs walking at six in the morning in January and both of your hands are taken. You are under the hood of a car, or under the sink, and the work light is pointing at the wrong thing. You ride to work and the helmet that is fine in October lets the wind straight through by December. You stand on a site all day under a hard hat, and in July the sweat runs into your eyes before lunch. You wear glasses, and on a windy job site the grit comes in from the side.

The kids beanies are for the child who walks home from the bus stop after dark, with the light at the front of the hat and both hands free for a bag. The liners are for cyclists and for anyone who works outside under a helmet. The balaclavas and the reflective hats are for winter shifts that start and end in the dark. And a hat with a light is an easy present for someone who has everything else, which is one reason the colors run so wide.

How the range is organized

Each shelf answers one problem, and you can shop by the problem rather than the product name. Hats with a light and kids LED beanies put light where you are looking. Reflective beanies make your head easier to spot in a car's headlights. Winter skull caps and balaclavas keep the cold off your head, ears and face under a helmet or on their own. Cooling skull caps catch the sweat in summer. Side shields and goggles are for the eyes.

Within a shelf, the styles differ in the details you feel on the day. One LED beanie runs up to 10 hours on a charge and another 2 to 8. One liner stretches from 22.4 to 24.4 inches, another from 21 to 24.5. Side shields come in packs from 2 to 60 pairs, in a standard size and a slim one for thin metal frames. Pick by the hours you are out, the size of your head and the frames you wear.

6 years of MELASA

MELASA has been making hats and eye gear since 2020, which puts the brand 6 years on the market. Over those years the range has filled in around the same person through the seasons: a beanie with a light for the dark months, a thin liner for the helmet, a mesh cap for the heat, and side shields for the glasses that stay on the whole year.

The catalog on this site is everything we sell. When you press a button, it opens that exact hat at our retail partner, where you place the order and where payment, delivery and returns are handled.

Where the safety advice comes from

Some of what we make sits next to rules written by other people. A liner goes under a hard hat, and OSHA has said in writing what it expects of liners. Side shields go on glasses, and OSHA, NIOSH and the safety equipment industry say which eyewear counts as protection. A reflective beanie is worn on dark roads, where NHTSA and the Federal Highway Administration describe what drivers see. A light runs on a lithium battery, and the NFPA says how to charge it and when to retire it.

You can follow every one of those rules to its source from our four guides: the LED beanie guide, the skull cap and liner guide, the eye protection guide and the guide to being seen at night. Where a job needs more than a hat or a pair of shields, such as a hi-vis vest on a road crew or Z87 eyewear on a site, wear that first and let our gear add to it.