The story of Leonard Cohen’s “magic writing” cap
“Greece is a good place to look at the moon, isn’t it?” Leonard Cohen posited in his poem, ‘Days of Kindness’. “You can read by moonlight / You can read on the terrace / You can see a face / as you saw it when you were young.”
In 1960, at 26 years old and for just $1,500, Cohen bought a house on Hydra, an island in the Saronic Gulf, where he set out to dedicate his time to writing poetry and fiction. While living on the island, he acquired a Greek Fisherman’s cap, a black cotton cap with a black leather interior band and a braided embroidery on its brim, which became a talismanic uniform. He believed that, when wearing this cap, he wrote his best work.
This cap was placed for auction in 2025 by Aviva Layton, a close friend of Cohen’s who met the poet-singer-songwriter through her late ex-husband, the poet Irving Layton. Aviva placed a collection of treasured items from Cohen up for the “Celebrating Leonard Cohen” auction, ranging from gifts to photographs, books, artwork and various correspondence. As she explained to Julien’s Auctions, they first met when Cohen visited her and Irving at their Montreal apartment in 1954, with Irving describing him as “the real thing”.
“I ran to the door when the bell rang, eager to meet this poet, only to open it to a plump young Jewish boy (he was 20, I was 21) dressed in a heavy dark three-piece suit,” Aviva recounted. “It didn’t take more than a few minutes, though, once Leonard started talking, to realise that I was in the presence of the most magical man I’d ever met – and would ever meet. From that moment on, Leonard became a constant in my life.”
Cohen and Irving first crossed paths when the former was enrolled at Herzliah High School in the 1940s; Layton was a teacher and would become young Cohen’s literary mentor and inspiration. The two would stay lifelong friends, writing poems to and about one another and forging a relationship in which they “remained intimate and treasured friends, equals despite their considerable age difference,” as described by Aviva.
In the 1960s, the Laytons would visit Cohen in Greece, where he lived for seven years from 1960 to ‘67. “Leonard was wearing his cap, and Irving said, ‘I write poetry, but I’d like to write songs and make tons of money like you,’” Layton recalled to Rolling Stone, of when she and Irving visited Cohen in Hydra in 1964.
“And Leonard said, ‘I’ve got this cap, it’s a magic cap. I’ve written all my early songs wearing this cap. I’m going to give it to you, and you’ll be able to write songs and make a lot of money too.’ Unfortunately, it only seemed to work for Leonard.”
Indeed, once Irving bought near-identical caps during his and Aviva’s annual summer trips to Lesvos, Greece, and they did not have the same magical properties that Cohen spoke of, Cohen “gave him his old battered salt-stiffened cap which, he said, had inspired him enough and now needed to be passed on”.
Irving, according to Aviva, never wore the cap himself, opting instead to keep it in the back of his desk drawer; later, it was discovered in an old box by their son, David, after Irving’s passing. The “magic writing” cap was estimated to auction for between $4-6,000, eventually selling for $7,800.
Hopefully, the humble cap truly can diffuse some mythical talents onto its owner, as it seems to have done for Cohen during his prolific years of writing in his beloved Hydra home.
