The London Lounge

Please widen your browser window. Beacause of the subject matter, I used the largest pics I could.

This post is the beginning of the tale of my newest hat. As you will see, the tale is incomplete and I will come back and add to it as the story unfolds. Until about six months ago, I had two Panama hats (also known as Montecristi’s, for the town in Ecuador where the bodies are sourced). One was nice and one was very nice. The nice one looks like this.

It is the hat on the right, with a black ribbon added, as is on the one on the left.

For reasons not relevant to this story, the very nice one is likely buried in a landfill in a hatbox that my wife assumed was empty.

I have been using the hat pictured above over the last two summers and it has served very well. In terms of quality of weave, it is equal to or better than just about any hat I have seen regularly stocked in New York, with the exception of the very best at Worth and Worth. It was finished in Ecuador, so the block and sweatband are not particularly nice. The ribbon, added afterwards in the U.S. is satisfactory at best. I really, really missed my nice hat and some weeks ago decided to replace it.

Today, I received photos of the hat body that will be turned into my new hat - the body is more or less fresh out of the shipping container from Ecuador.







The hat is now on its way to the person who will finish the hat for me. That means blocking it to the right size and shape, sewing in a leather sweatband and tying and sewing the ribbon. I have not yet decided exactly what shape the hat should take and suggestions are welcome. Unlike felt raw hat cones, Montecristi hat bodies have a set perimeter where the fronds are backwoven into the body to create a neat edge. That means the hat body has limits on the size of crown and width of brim that can be made for any given head size. While a felt body also has limits, because the brim can be cut to size and shape, there is more flexibility.

My plan is for this hat to be more of a dressy city hat than a casual beach hat, but the exact shape will be guided, in consultation with the blocker, by the proportions that hat seems to offer up.

As you can see from the closeup of the weave, this is a very fine quality hat. I also have a good deal of control over the final product. Still, this is nowhere near the limit of what can be done, and I would hesitate to call this a bespoke hat. The hat body was chosen for me at the marketplace by an agent of the importer from the hundreds of bodies available. It was picked to match as closely as possible my quality and size specifications. It was not, however, woven for me. It is also not the finest Ecuador can offer. It is possible to specially commission the weaving of a hat to the exact size you want and to a much finer weave than this. That would be a true bespoke Montecristi. I have never seen a straw that good in person. As rare as hat wearers are, and If all goes well in the making, I suspect that mine is likely to be as fine a Montecristi as I will come across (ss long as I stay away from Ed Hayes).

I hope you enjoy these pictures and I look forward to having more to show you.

Dear Dopey,

I was at Worth and Worth last week trying on a straw Fedora at Orlando’s request. I’m still getting used to wearing hats in public and opted for a linen cap, but I am beginning to get more comfortable. Best of luck with this pursuit. I look forward to hearing more about progress on this hat and expect to learn greatly from it.

This is a wonderful project, Dopey.

A pity, though, about the tale of wife, hatbox, and landfill; chin up, though I feel your pain, brother.

I hope it was not the Panama that I admired, a truly wonderful hat, that, the best Panama I ever saw.

I am happy that you have now found a new hat to again become involved with.

Thank you for the sentiments. The hat in the landfill is,sadly, the hat you saw, uppercase. Its replacement is actually a finer grade. As I had to put much more work into the making of the original, I was very attached to it even if it was lesser quality.

After a discussion with the hatmaker, a preliminary styling plan is in place. The objective was to come up with something elegant, as this hat will be reserved for wear with more formal clothing - I already have a panama for weekend and more casual coat-and-tie wear. I also wanted the styling to work with my proportions and those of the hat body.

We selected a center dent, no side pinches, with a relatively tall crown and narrower brim (2.5” or less). The brim will be fedora style, with perhaps a pencil curl if the brim needs to be minimized a bit. The overall effect will be akin to a homburg, but without the trademark shackle curl. Ribbon will be a bit wider than usual in a dark shade of blue.

Since this is a report, I might as well describe the process.

After the hatmaker received the hat body, he sent me a conformer to make a head tracing. The conformer is a modern version of the mystery object costi had posted some time ago. Unlike the older versions, it is a standalone device and does not need a receptacle to do its job. Being made of acrylic, silicone, dime store hardware and elastic, it is not nearly as pretty. It is also slightly less accurate as it does not have as many measuring fingers. Nonetheless, the design is still ingenious and effective. I also used a measuring tape for an additional circumference measurement.

The hatmaker and I had spoken on other occasions and in other contexts, but we had never met. Nonetheless, I have seen lots of his work and had a fairly good sense of his aesthetic. I gave him a detailed description of my styling objectives (but not a target style), a few photos of me in various other hats and a general physical description. After thinking on it a bit, he called with a suggestion and with a little more guidance from me on preferences, we had a plan.

I hope to have some pictures of the work in progress, which will make for another post.

Sounds like this project is going to turn out beautifully!

Dopey

I took the liberty to resuscitate this old, nice thread. Has your project been accomplished in the mean time? I should love to see some images of it. One thing interesting about Panama hats is that there is so much craftsmanship involved in their construction; a genuine superfino can take several months to be finished.

Do you have some experience with Optimo? I have been considering to acquire one I would be able to a roll up, though it seems that it tends to loose its original shape as one folds it too often. I found some information on how to roll up an Optimo in this link:

http://www.brentblack.com/pages/howtoro ... mahat.html

Here HRH Prince Charles with a Panama. A fellow LL member was not quite enthusiastic about the Prince's hat as I called his attention this image:




Best
Marcelo