I absolutely love the steampunk culture, including the clothes - I already have aviator glasses and a pocket watch. I thought about buying a steampunk hat, but I realized that a huge part of the steampunk culture is DIY and that it would be more fun and more steampunk to customize a hat !
However, the last time I built something by myself (without counting nanoblocks), I was... 10. So, let's say I know nothing about clothes customization.
So, do you have any tips on this ? They can be tips on how to customize a hat, how to customize things in a steampunk way, which hat to choose... feel free to give me any tips you want as long as it's related to hats, steampunk and/or DIY !
Here are examples of two steampunk hats I like (obviously I will not put LED lights or complex things like this on mine because I'm a beginner) :
1) https://www.reddit.com/r/steampunk/comments/mlzh8q/steampunk_industrial_style_minihat_0027h0004_a/
2) https://www.reddit.com/r/steampunk/comments/mu0jru/steampunk_industrial_cosplay_minihat_0040h0009_a/
As far as sourcing gears, I'm pretty sure I've seen them in craft stores over the past few years, and just searching online for "steampunk gears" or similar terms gives some options where they'll sell you literally just a bag with 100 g or whatever mass of gears for this kind of thing.
On a completely different note, Girl Genius is a comic that the creators describe as "gaslamp fantasy" but that they agree has a very large overlap with the steampunk aesthetic (very roughly Regency- through Edwardian-era outfits, airships from hell to breakfast, etc.). It's also a lot of fun just on the merits. Anyway, might be worth a look.