Aaarghhhh!
We've just got our nice new green commando berets but of course I managed to order the wrong size. I got a size 7 which, according to the internet site I looked at, was equivalent to 57cm, but the label states it's 56cm, so a bit tight.
I've stupidly tried hot water and stretched it but the leather band has now gone massive and it kind of sags around my eyes now.
Is there any way of shrinking it back? Have tried speed drying it with a hairdryer in the hope that it would go back to normal after drying.
Also, whilst on the subject, does BD shrink in the wash, or go massive like berets? Only my nice new BD jacket is very marginally too big and, seeing as I don't learn from my mistakes, I was thinking of putting it through a hot wash to shrink it slightly.
I assume you've tried adjusting the ribbon that runs through the headband...
If you trim a bit off the seam you can get the ribbon to reduce the headband circumference even more.
I wouldn't muck about trying to shrink BDs in the wash. My dad told me that his National Service BD looked as if it was made for Coco the Clown 
"The size we've got is the size you gets, alright?"
Alternatively start eating some more pies and fill it out a bit more.
Ditto to what Beds said.
But... BD does shrink in the wash if you don't stretch it a bit as soon as it comes out.
Also only wash it in a wool wash.
In the army they would have got their best BDs tailored to fit... and you can do the same! Find a local tailor/alterations place... they do still exist! 
Heh, I've found in the past that in the shaping process if I got the leather band wet in the hot/cold plunging/shaping process it shrinks, not expands. So that's at odds with your experience!
(I know generally with WW2 berets they were just plopped on the head but meh, it looks too silly for my taste!)
Anyhoo, you might find the alternate piping hot/freezing cold cycles does the trick esp. as Beds says, with modding the band a little.
Weird,ive always had my leather banded berets shrink the band while shaping 
Is the band actualy leather as on some repros they are pvc/vinyl??
Thanks for the advice all.
The band is leather, but I actively stretched it because it was too small, but was a bit heavy handed I think.
Drying over-night seems to have helped and tying the lace very tight as Beds suggested, so it's actually nearly a pretty good fit now, more by luck than judgement.
I made a pair of BD trousers fit better be wearing 'em and getting someone to hose me and let them dry on me, just like what you had to do with the old style jeans. Go wear your BD and sit in a bath full of luke-warm water, pull the plug, and read a book or have a DVD playing nearby while it dries around you. Move about a bit so that it doesn't dry to tight in areas where you wouldn't want it too 
A Proud Member Of 'Team Spleen!' who play mainly at Gunman Airsoft, Tuddenham, Suffolk.
Nice idea, and it just so happens it's my monthly bath tonight!
* Waits for Barrie's next topic *
"How do I un-shrink my wool BD as I can't get them off and I don't like sleeping in wet clothes plus they will look at me at bit funny at work tomorrow if I turn up looking like Norman Wisdom in The Square Peg "
Now trying to clean my keyboard as I just spat coffee all over it 
You're drinking coffee at this time of night?
I work nights.
ah I see...
