Curly haired friends, how do you deal with winter hat weather?

It’s getting cold out where I am and every store around here sells your standard winter hats that are made of the kinds of fabric that are terrible for curly hair.

If I dare to wear my winter hat, my hair looks like absolute garbage afterwards, loses its shape and is frizzed to all hell, just as you would expect. So I often go hatless and freeze from the neck up because I can’t go to work looking like a rat lives in my hair.

My hair is very fine and I always wake up looking like a mess. It likes to form kinda chaotic half wave half curls without a lot of care. I need to reactivate every day and that means making my hair moist so it’s a challenge to wear a hat after doing that.

I don’t have time to diffuse daily and paying for all these curly hair products hurts my budget so I don’t even have a diffuser. Plus if I diffused at home then put on the hat it would undo everything anyway.

In theory I could reactivate at work… and start the day with wet hair which is already something I deal with at times and I hate how unprofessional I look like that.

Lastly… I am a migraine sufferer and have yet to find a muffler or earmuffs that would minimize the hat hair damage without giving me a horrible headache from the tension :(

Any advice on products, techniques to deal? Even if it might not work for me, please share as I hope it could help others.

Current routine: Ouidad Waterworks clarifying shampoo + Curlsmith Frizz Control Duo conditioner every 3-4 days (recovering from Curlsmith Shine line making my hair look greasy AF), microfiber cloth scrunch & air dry, silk pillowcase at night, daily water mist and scrunch with dashes of Curlsmith moisture memory reactivator spray… but routine doesn’t really matter for me when a winter hat just wrecks it all.