In what era were the best hats in America made?

[alanfgag]

Certain aspects of hatmaking and finishing are lost... the machinery, the materials, the workforce, the market. For those desiring to purchase a new hat in the vintage style, there are excellent choices. While it may be possible for a skilled craftsperson to duplicate the elements of early hats, I haven't seen this and I can't imagine the market would hold the interest or tolerate the cost. Here are a few photos from hats in my collection made in the early 20th century.

silk ribbon on this 190? Hawes Von Gal:

silk lined underbrim, Cheyenne western c. 1910

... and a Borsalino brim binding from the 1950s. European makers carried forward earlier craft values after American companies had moved on.

 

[mayserwegener]

Certain aspects of hatmaking and finishing are lost... the machinery, the materials, the workforce, the market. For those desiring to purchase a new hat in the vintage style, there are excellent choices. While it may be possible for a skilled craftsperson to duplicate the elements of early hats, I haven't seen this and I can't imagine the market would hold the interest or tolerate the cost. Here are a few photos from hats in my collection made in the early 20th century.

silk ribbon on this 190? Hawes Von Gal:

silk lined underbrim, Cheyenne western c. 1910

... and a Borsalino brim binding from the 1950s. European makers carried forward earlier craft values after American companies had moved on.

Great post!

For example the art of making stiff felts.

G. M. Hutfabrik (Saxony, Germany, late 1800s very early 1900s)

 

[Atticus Finch]

Even after seven years on FL, I still know very little about hats as compared to many others here...but I have two ORs from the fifties, a Royal Deluxe and a XXX. The quality of felt in these hats is clearly above anything else I own...with the notable exception of my Falcon Park Custom. And I’m thinking that my hats would have only been middle quality Stetsons when they were new.

I only wear (and buy) ORs and OR clones, so I have no experience with hats any older than the fifties. But based on my limited observations, I would say the fifties was the pinnacle of at least Open Road making.

AF

 

[TheDane]

I still feel that the hats made today, by the private labels, are every bit as good as the ones made during the last century. The ease in which we can communicate details, the quality materials being sourced, and the techniques being used by the artisan allow a product that easily rivals the hats of yesteryear

I think you miss trustworthy informations on the materials, available today - and probably also on the techniques used then and now. It's objectively wrong, that materials of today should be better. Both the available felt, ribbon and leather qualities have substantially declined.

Why do you think the materials should be so much better today? And where did the theory on the superiority of the artisians contemporary techniques come from? I hear most custom hatters bemoan the lack of quality of the materials at hand. I also hear them admit, that they simply can't redo many of yesteryear's techniques. The felted brim edge can nolonger be replicated by any feltery or hatter, and the contemporary longhair felt qualities are very far from what was available up until the 50s/60s.

I respect your feelings, but that is what they are ... "feelings". I guess hatters know about their craft, and they tell a completely different story

 

[tonyb]

In the city of my early years stood a brewery structure built in 1848. It was operating until I was about 10 years old and was demolished a few years after that.

There are many similar stories of local brands of beer made in local breweries (as contrasted with the brand names being slapped on products made in mega-breweries hundreds of miles away) that boarded up the buildings a half century or so ago. I don't know when the trend started, but the economics of the beer business surely did turn against those local producers. These days, the vast majority of the beer consumed in the country is produced by a coupla-three companies. People who know their beer, the real aficionados, generally disdain the stuff.

(See where this is going?)

Now there's a micro-brewery just about everywhere you go. As a one-time avid beer drinker (damned doctors), I can testify that the beer produced by most of those craft brewers is clearly superior to what you get from the big guys. No doubt about it. Day and night. Et cetera.

The craft breweries' share of the market is small, for sure, but very good beer is indeed being made these days.

Hats ain't beer, so, this analogy, like all analogies, goes only so far. But the once lost (or all but lost) brewing techniques have been rediscovered by new generations of craftspeople. A market for superior ingredients has seen the folks on the farm step up to meet that demand.

In just the past year or so we've seen felt hat body makers tackle, at the behest of their custom hat maker customers, fur blends that result in hat felts of stunning quality. Those custom hat makers have, quite recently, branched out into different finishes. They're teaching themselves (and one another, in some cases) through trail and error, as the people who knew how to do this stuff way back when have long since shuffled off this mortal coil. But they're learning. And they're getting better and making more and more interesting, distinctive, and well-crafted hats.

I don't expect to see the mass producers mimic any of this, at least not on a large scale. But the bar has been raised. And it continues to rise.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

The felted brim edge can nolonger be replicated by any feltery or hatter

I agree with most of what you say. On this specific one of your points, it's important to admit that the felted brim is not a particularly complicated process. A modern-day company that produces felt hat bodies from raw shaved fur could very easily produce a Cavanagh/Mode/Self-Edge/Self-Felted brim edge. I imagine that they don't have the demand (no-ones going to go to the expense to develop the skills/process, train up some workers, rework their whole production, just to satisfy the very small number of vintage hat enthusiasts who would buy such a hat). Or that the necessarily labour-intensive process is too expensive in labour hours to produce this edge option at the price point that hatters are willing to pay for felt bodies.

Damn it ^^ I wish I'd thought of the micro-brew analogy. You're exactly right, tonyb!

 

[alanfgag]

... I imagine that they don't have the demand (no-ones going to go to the expense to develop the skills/process, train up some workers, rework their whole production, just to satisfy the very small number of vintage hat enthusiasts who would buy such a hat). Or that the necessarily labour-intensive process is too expensive in labour hours to produce this edge option at the price point that hatters are willing to pay for felt bodies.

Damn it ^^ I wish I'd thought of the micro-brew analogy. You're exactly right, tonyb!

I imagine this as well. I expect that fine leathers, deep embossment, fine printing and tiny stitches can still be sourced today. The machines once used to do this are probably more difficult to acquire and use, but the market for fine hats is likely small enough that superb craftsmanship on a cottage industry scale could meet marketplace demand. I wonder if the price point could be achieved, but looking at Optimo, I think it is a possibility. One problem is that many of the few interested in the wonderful material and construction features found in early hats are more interested in antiques than they are in contemporary reproductions. I fall into that camp. I think the parallel with other types of antiques and their collectors might be more apt. In beers, we have a product whose market has never gone flat. We are enjoying a good vs. bad (if not good vs. evil ) enlightenment which has fired up a nice renaissance in craft brewing.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

You're right. This also holds true in the US. There are some truly godawful 1930s/40s hats out there!

The sweatbands are an area where European and British hats were particularly bad in the early 1950s especially. Some of the German ones are the worst I've ever seen. Cheap and flimsy, almost pleather. American hats in my experience suffer less from this deficiency.

Not living in the US I can't easily comment on the average standard of vintage US hats, but have been impressed with those I've bought. From a UK perspective though, whilst there are plenty of very nice pre-60's hats out there, they're not universally wonderful. Felt quality is typically better than most modern mass-produced hats, but some are pretty mediocre, and the ribbon work isn't always much better. Certainly sweatbands on some vintage English hats are pretty grim extremely cheap and thin leather.

 

[TheDane]

A modern-day company that produces felt hat bodies from raw shaved fur could very easily produce a Cavanagh/Mode/Self-Edge/Self-Felted brim edge.

As far as I know, Brad once succeeded in getting Winchester to make a felted edge on old machinery. As I understood him, the result was pretty far from the old edges. The principles are very simple, but it seems like it can't be done by any living felters or hatters. Nobody knows the details anymore. I would like to see some documentation for "very easily". I guess that was an "editorial tightening"

I don't doubt, that a lot of yesterday's techniques and knowledge can be reinvented, but many of them cannot be taught - simply because the teachers are not alive anymore. The micro breweries is a little different story, as there still were lots of living master brewers who had learned the old craft - and the craft was partly kept alive by a lot of "basement-brewers" during the profession's decline. The brewing craft was very much alive in other countries, and a lot of the new micro-master-brewers went to places like The Czeck republic, where high quality beer from small breweries always had been common. We don't have equivalent isolated enclaves where felting and hatting crafts have been untouched for centuries.

I'm aware that both Optimo and Art have developed their felts in coorporation with Winchester and Fepsa over the last couple of years. But there are still a lot of earlier used materials, that are no longer available to felters and hatters. Partly due to environmental restrictions and partly because the goods are economically unprofitable to produce today. Try to read old patents and check how few of the chemicals that can be used today.

I too hope, but I'm not that optimistic

 

[fedoracentric]

... Certainly sweatbands on some vintage English hats are pretty grim extremely cheap and thin leather.

I think you misunderstand what you are looking at. The ultra thin sweatbands are actually a mark of high quality, not "cheapness." Those fine leathers did not age well past 50 years, granted, and often got brittle (but hats weren't meant to last 100 yrs after all). But to make leather that thin, supple and deeply embossed is the height of the leathermaker's art! That is why as years passed the leather got thicker and less adorned--it is because the quality fell! It did not rise.

 

[fedoracentric]

I am, however, willing to argue that hats every bit the equal of the hats made in the 1940s and '50s can be and are made today, by any of several custom hat makers using materials readily (more or less) available.

Couldn't disagree with this more.

First I should say that many of the hats made by Art, Chicago's Optimo, Falcon Park, et al, these are great hats. But to say they are the equal of the best from the 20s and 30s or even as late as the 50s is just absurd.

Today's hatters, as good as they are, just have no access to the finest materials, the high-end machinery, and best felts that were available everywhere in the early part of the last century. They just can't do what was once done. It is flat out impossible for them to achieve past expertise. It isn't their fault, granted, but they just can't do it.

Again, they make fine hats today and I have some and wear them proudly, but they simply aren't on the same plane as the products of the old days.

 

[Tomasso]

the available felt, ribbon and leather qualities have substantially declined.

Have they declined or have hatters chosen not to use them due to their high cost?

 

[TheDane]

Have they declined or have hatters chosen not to use them due to their high cost?

They have declined. Hatters choose to use vintage ribbon because the rayon was made from natural fibers. Today's rayon is made from synthetic fibers, which result in a lot stiffer ribbon. That makes it a lot harder to make the ribbon "embrase" the (tapered) crown tightly. Often there are dramatic difference between leather from free living animals and from industrial produced animals. Probably the tanning processes have changed over the years, too. You can still find good leather, but it's absolutely not easy - but you can't produce a sweatband from high quality leather for $10-15.

 

[mayserwegener]

I don't doubt, that a lot of yesterday's techniques and knowledge can be reinvented, but many of them cannot be taught - simply because the teachers are not alive anymore. The micro breweries is a little different story, as there still were lots of living master brewers who had learned the old craft - and the craft was partly kept alive by a lot of "basement-brewers" during the profession's decline. The brewing craft was very much alive in other countries, and a lot of the new micro-master-brewers went to places like The Czeck republic, where high quality beer from small breweries always had been common. We don't have equivalent isolated enclaves where felting and hatting crafts have been untouched for centuries.

I'm aware that both Optimo and Art have developed their felts in coorporation with Winchester and Fepsa over the last couple of years. But there are still a lot of earlier used materials, that are no longer available to felters and hatters. Partly due to environmental restrictions and partly because the goods are economically unprofitable to produce today. Try to read old patents and check how few of the chemicals that can be used today.

I too hope, but I'm not that optimistic

There was also a high degree of secrecy. For example JHS produced Velour finishes & colors nobody else was able to match (this was also the case for Austrian Velours in general). They were extremely secretive about their processes. I came a across UK government study from the 30s that couldn't understand why the UK hat companies were not able to match the Austrian Velour finishes that were produced in Czecho-Slovakia (was Austria prior WWI).

Many of the top hat companies from the time period produced pretty much everything under one roof. They didn't have to source felt because they made their own. They designed and manufactured their own hat machines. Great amounts on money were put into research and development to stay ahead of the competition. Pelts were aged in vaults for a year or two prior to felting. A high end Velour finish could take couple weeks to produce. I could go on and on.

 

[tonyb]

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Sometimes it leads a person to make absolute statements, as though it were knowledge handed down from on high, rather than opinions based on one's own limited experience and the opinions of others of more or less equally limited experience.

 

[TheDane]

Steve: I totally agree. As you other places have pointed out, the Germans and Austrians didn't file patents like US-manufactorers did. We know about as much about the old German and Austrian velours as we do about Stetson's VitaFelt. What was it - what did it contain - and how was it made? We don't know, and written documentation seems impossible to find

 

[mayserwegener]

Some of the German ones are the worst I've ever seen. Cheap and flimsy, almost pleather. American hats in my experience suffer less from this deficiency.

But this would not be the case with high end German hats from 1950s. IMO the high end German hats (say Mayser) in general were better made than there US equivalents (say Stetson) from that time period.

 

[mayserwegener]

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Sometimes it leads a person to make absolute statements, as though it were knowledge handed down from on high, rather than opinions based on one's own limited experience and the opinions of others of more or less equally limited experience.

Who are you addressing this to?

 

[TheDane]

Tony: A lot of truth in that. But who is the goal for the comment? It looks personal, but the address seems missing

 

[tonyb]

Who are you addressing this to?

Not any one person in particular.

I don't exclude myself from that portion of the population (men, generally) occasionally given to conflating their own preciously held beliefs with undeniable fact.

I just see people digging in their heels here, and making sweeping generalizations and bold assertions that wouldn't hold up under more careful scrutiny. One's own experience is not all there is to know. And some of what a person "knows" might well be less than 100 percent accurate.