How would you rank the Vintage Fedora?

[Cigarband]

Taking the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as the Vintage Fedora Years;
how would you rank the Hat Makers as to Good, Better, and Best?

I realize how subjective this is, but I am just starting to collect Vintage Fedoras, and would appreciate the guidance of fellow Loungers.

My Father ranked his hats in this order Best to Good:

Dobbs
Resistol
Cavanaugh
Stetson


And within each Makers line, what would you rate the "Best" model?

A Vintage Fedora is like a Vintage Wine, a treat for the Senses.

 

[Jerekson]

My collection isn't massive, so my input shoudl be taken with a grain of salt, but here...

Knox
Stetson
Worth
Penney's

The rest of all my hats are Akubra's.

 

[reetpleat]

Perhaps cliche, but I will put Borsalino at the top. hey, what were the english hat makers?

 

[Belegnole]

lol......sorry

 

[Dewhurst]

A Vintage Fedora is like a Vintage Wine, a treat for the Senses.

Unfortunately, they don't always smell as good...

 

[avedwards]

Wouldn't that vary depending on which quality of hat you have? Even if Borsalino may have been a better maker than Stetson, wouldn't a top grade Stetson still have been better than a standard grade Borsalino?

 

[barrowjh]

Not Realistic

This is not a realistic expectation, as all manufacturers were capable of turning out top-shelf hats, and occasionally we bump into such beauties from just about all of them. Same holds true today, Gus Miller at Batsakes, Mike Moore at Buckaroo, Art Fawcett at VintageSilhouettes, Graham Thompson at Optimo, and others; all can and do produce a top-shelf hat, though the equipment, rent, labor costs may differ, and the targeted market segment may be different also.

There were some vintage manufacturers that appealed to those with less money (Adam, Towncraft). Similarly, we have manufacturers today that are capable of turning out top-shelf hats but are instead producing mediocrity in volume to satisfy the walmartized consumers. So if one manufacturer consistently produced better hats than the competition, it was more of a result of a marketing decision about which consumer group to target than because they were just 'better' - and we see that today also.

 

[jimmy the lid]

Nothing personal intended, Cigarband. I think, though, that the kind of info you're after already exists in a number of threads covering the same topic. This thread is a good starting point.

Cheers,
JtL

 

[Cigarband]

Nothing personal intended, Cigarband. I think, though, that the kind of info you're after already exists in a number of threads covering the same topic. This thread is a good starting point.

Cheers,
JtL

I appreciate the directions Jimmy, and everybody's thoughts.
Thanks.:eusa_clap

 

[Dewhurst]

Nothing personal intended, Cigarband. I think, though, that the kind of info you're after already exists in a number of threads covering the same topic. This thread is a good starting point.

Cheers,
JtL

Hmm, which brings up the very common forum problem of "vastness". This term describes the frequent occurrence of a forum possessing a certain amount of history and a certain amount of content which provides value to users, but unwieldiness in turn.

How do you combat the inevitable redundancy that any long lived and busy "discussion" forum will contain?

 

[GWD]

The biggest problem with this forum is it's lack of a decent search engine.

This ought to be a sticky on top of every category.

 

[jimmy the lid]

I just ran a "search titles only" for "brands" in the the Hats forum. It turns up a couple of threads that are right on target in terms of what Cigarband seems to be looking for: "Brands".

Just one example...

Cheers,
JtL

 

[carter]

Jimmy has a good point. We don't need any more "Rate Your Hats and Their Makers" threads. It would be a good idea to merge those that currently exist. Jimmy didn't have much trouble finding a whole bunch of threads.

We all know that a better Search Engine would be nice but it won't solve the issue of having members who would rather start a new thread than bother looking for an appropriate thread that already exists. Why not "Bump" an exiting thread rather than start a new one?

 

[GWD]

One of the biggest problems, one that won't be solved, is any newbie to any forum won't know what to search for or what questions to ask until he or she has done some research.

We should all accept the fact that the new members are going to ask questions that have already been asked and answered a hundred different ways. There is no solution to the problem. I know I was guilty when I first signed on here.

I've belonged to many forums and this one by far, has the most patient and knowledgeable members I've ever run across.

 

[Panamabob]

I know several people who won't come back here due to rudeness. One quipped that this WAS a place for gentleman (except me!). He'd been here for years and has no interest in returning.

 

[Jerekson]

I know several people who won't come back here due to rudeness. One quipped that this WAS a place for gentleman (except me!). He'd been here for years and has no interest in returning.

That's horrible. I remember in particular a member on here was pretty quickly dispatched of due to a very heated attack against a homosexual member. I was totally impressed by the staff's quickness to ban him, but still sort of shocked that a person like that was hanging around here for years prior to the incident.
I guess you never know when someone will cause a scene...

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread like that.

 

[Sargon]

This is obviously a topic that will arise from time to time and I could name a half dozen other topics that will be and have been repleted ad infinitum. Making a sticky for each of these would be unwieldy and the FAQ and "links to important hat forum threads" is only going to take you so far.

What's the solution? I'm not really sure unfortunately I'm not a web site designer. I can tell you that interacting with my fellow man is more enjoyable than sitting on my hands and mutely reading the interchange that occurred in the forum from years past.

We come here to interact and to learn. If it were just the latter, one of us could just compile a book of all the posts, publish it, and be done with it. But the interchange of ideas is what will keep people coming back and forming relationships and synthesizing new ideas perhaps. Maybe there are many new people and personalities on the forum since the question had last been asked and discussed. If every hat question has been asked and answered already let the newbies talk amongst themselves with the helpful interjection of an oldster or two. Asking people to have a PhD in hattology, reading all the previous posts and mastering a difficult search engine seems unrealistic.

 

[Dewhurst]

Discussion forums, like a group of acquaintances in real life, are organic. Oldies filter out, newbies filter in, and like an ideal or religion, hashed conversations constantly need to be re-hashed. It is the general way that discussion forums work.

However, it should be obvious that many people use modern discussion forums as archives of information. They can be difficult to use this way though, owing to the organic nature. When 20 people ask the same question in 20 different ways, the lack of centralisation in relation to the generation of ideas becomes obvious.

Besides, even to this day (after wearing hats for nearly all of my life), I still do not mind talking about who produces hats and how well I think they make them. Maybe I'm just weird.

 

[Spats McGee]

I don't know the answer to the "ranking vintage fedoras" question. What I do know is this: I'm moderately technologically savvy, and even after a couple of years here, I still find it difficult to dig stuff up through the search engine, and even using Google.

I have to say, though, that these:

are rude and uncalled-for. Especially when we're talking about a new member. I'd call these a sure-fire way to turn new members into former members with low post counts. GWD is right: new members won't even know what to search for. As a result, they're going to continue to ask some of the same questions over and over.

Ok. Done ranting now.

Now, maybe a suggestion. One forum that I visit has a stickied thread called "Quick Answers to Newbie Questions." It's not intended for anyone to read the whole thread, but rather just to post, well, quick newbie questions. For this forum, maybe things like: "What is grosgrain?" or "How wide is the brim on an Akubra CEO?" or even "Can someone point me to some links on Dobbs felt quality?" Perhaps something like that would help?

Welcome to the Lounge, Cigarband! Please accept my apologies for hijacking your thread.

 

[ScottF]

I have to say that I really appreciate how well everyone treats newbies here. I've become a seasoned member of other hobby forums and always took a beating in the beginning, but that hasn't happened here.