100% Fur Felt?

[Wash In Lux]

Tried searching for this.

If a hat says "100% Imported Fur", is it more than likely all rabbit or a mixture of rabbit and something else as opposed to 100% beaver? Seems like if it was beaver, it'd say beaver.

 

[scottyrocks]

Most likely, yes. It also depends on price. Youre most likely not gonna get a beaver felt hat for below a given price point. Im just approximating, but it seems that $300 is approximately the cut-off point for the rabbit-to-beaver changeover. Of course, there are felts that are a blend of rabbit and beaver. A common ratio is 80/20.

 

[Wash In Lux]

Yeah, I think this is just a fancy way of saying "It ain't wool but ain't no beaver in here neither". As opposed to the hat marked 10x indicating that there is some beaver.
I think for the rest of my life, every time I say or think beaver, I think about Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun, "Nice beaver".

 

[dhermann1]

The more you look at ads on the web, and Ebay descriptions, the more nonsense you discover. You can actually see ads and listings that will say "fur felt" and "100% wool" at the same time. You'll quickly learn how to distinguish.

 

[Wash In Lux]

I have noticed that. It's trickeries and fancy mumbo jumbo nonsense. Exactly why I posed the question. Been wearing hats for years, all vintage, and never really paid much attention to the quality factor until I started wearing cowboy hats. All I knew was that wool was cheap and never bothered with it. After I started paying attention and learning a little bit, it was nice to realize what the 100% beaver meant on the Beaver Brand I'm wearing in my avatar. I've had that hat 10+ years and only learned recently of its quality. I got that hat for FREE!

 

[Chinaski]

I'm sure most would say 100% beaver is of the highest quality felt, but there's also nothing wrong with high quality fur felt. If you go vintage, I believe you would be pleased with fur felt. I have a Stetson Royal Deluxe that is fantastic felt, and not beaver.

 

[feltfan]

A lot of vintage hats are largely hare/rabbit.
As I understand it, there's a fair amount of rabbit
in those Borsalinos we all like so much. An awful lot
of those Stetsons people have posted on this site
which are so nice do not carry the "Clear Beaver" stamp.

The felting process seems to be just as important in
felt quality, though of course it's not everything.

And hey, wool is sheep "fur", right

 

[Andykev]

It comes from overseas, not the USA.

100% imported fur is just that. The fur is from Europe, or the Baltic states, etc. Not many places in the USI that makes fur hat bodies, hence they are cheaper to import.

If the hat were Beaver, it would be silly not for the manufacturer to so state. Beaver is much more expensive than bunny fur.

Also, most hats are a blend with a high amount of rabbit fur (save VS hats, and Optimo which clearly state BEAVER).

Back in vintage times, the process was better...I believe Optimo was working on a "pre shrinking" process to the hat body prior to blocking the hat.

 

[mayserwegener]

A lot of vintage hats are largely hare/rabbit.
As I understand it, there's a fair amount of rabbit
in those Borsalinos we all like so much. An awful lot
of those Stetsons people have posted on this site
which are so nice do not carry the "Clear Beaver" stamp.

The felting process seems to be just as important in
felt quality, though of course it's not everything.

And hey, wool is sheep "fur", right

I totally agree. The finest felt I have come across is my 30s seal velour (see profile pic) which is as far as I know hare/rabbit.

 

[AlterEgo]

Just speculating here, but here's an educated guess on what "100% imported fur" means:

If the fur were beaver, it would surely say so, as beaver's considered the best and prestigious. And, as previously mentioned, any all-beaver hat is $300+. So, it's not beaver. If it were a rabbit/beaver mix, it would probably indicate that because any amount of beaver's a selling point that justifies a higher price point. Ergo, it has no beaver fur in it.

It could very well be 100% fur felt, i.e., all rabbit or hare fur. Since the hat is imported, this could be just a case of the foreign manufacturer's not knowing the correct words to properly describe a hat to the consumers in the import country. However, I think this is unlikely, as all remaining manufacturers do business globally and would use "fur felt" if that's what the hat was constructed of.

So, it's probably made from the fur of some other animal. There's a thread somewhere on FL not too long ago that went into that, and there I learned of mammals such as otters whose fur I never before was aware had been made into felt for hats. This is not necessarily a bad thing--some of those oddball-creature felts were quite nice.

Going with probabilities, I'd guess the hat was made of nutria, the underfur of the coypu, a big-ass aquatic rodent native to Central and South America that ranges into the extreme southern parts of the U.S. It's basically a south-of-the-border beaver, but was introduced to Europe and North America specifically to be raised for fur, though I don't know if that's still being done. Most current nutria comes from South America; if there is Spanish or Portugese verbiage elsewhere on the hat, that would support this theory.

Personally, I've handled only one nutria hat, and it was as fine as any beaver I've ever seen. While some say that nutria fur is somewhat coarser, others maintain that it's every bit the equivalent of beaver. I'd chalk up the difference to the felt manufacuring process and not which animal the fur came from.

So, why wouldn't the maker just inscribe "100% nutria fur?" Well, nutria never gained traction as a favorable or even widely known quantity. Knowing that a hat made of it was being produced for export, the manufacturer probably figured it would add zero prestige, perhaps even be subtractive in that regard, and simply baffle those who'd never heard of it. (Look it up in my Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and it says, "see Beaver.")

Accordingly, they just wrote the generic "100% imported fur" in the hat, making we Fedora Loungers squirm for answers.

 

[feltfan]

So, why wouldn't the maker just inscribe "100% nutria fur?" Well, nutria never gained traction as a favorable or even widely known quantity.

Huh? We have seen examples here of imported hats marked as
nutria fur, including Borsalinos. But more to the point, Stetson made a
big deal of "Nutria Quality" for decades and "Clear Nutria" was quite the
luxury hat and sold as such.

Nutria may be forgotten now, but it had its heyday. That's why
it was profitable to farm them back then (the farms from which
they escaped and infested Louisiana).

 

[Brad Bowers]

Crofut & Knapp also offered Clear Nutria hats, to the extent that they featured a Nutria on their logo for a number of years in the early part of the last century.

Brad

 

[scooter]

Interestingly, in Spanish speaking countries, nutria refers to the other. Wonder if that applies in Italy or with Borsalino.

 

[scooter]

Not other, I meant otter.

 

[Yeps]

Interestingly, in Spanish speaking countries, nutria refers to the other. Wonder if that applies in Italy or with Borsalino.

I did a quick check, the Italian word for otter is lontra. Nutria appears to be used in Italian as is.