The International Wool Felt Consortium

[PanosChris]

I like the idea of dedicated threads hosting a niche of particular hat style, origin, finish etc, but it seems that there are a few (at least 3) about wool hats and without much traffic either. Is it a good idea to merge them in one and post there our wool soft and stiff hats? Brent? I know some of us are thrilled about finding/seeing the old European wools (not common in US). I'll point out the other overlapping threads (2 more-though one has really seen some action) I know.

*edit. Here they are:
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/the-under-appreciated-wool-felt-hat.52165/

https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/the-wool-felt-hat-thread.53107/

 

[PanosChris]

Wool thread no.2

 

[M Brown]

Anybody out there prefer wool-felt hats to fur-felt? Do tell!

I abandoned wool felt hats in the 80's after getting caught in a heavy downpour in my favorite fedora. It dried several sizes smaller to a child size. So it's been fur felt ever since.

 

[Uncle Will]

.

I don't think this Merino wool hat will shrink enough to fit my head. I wet it thoroughly with hot water, let it dry and it's not smaller. I tossed the still-damp hat into the clothes dryer and the wool shrinkage is still not noticeable! This is not what I expected! I'm going to wet the hat again and dry it all the way in the dryer. The hat will rumple up and look a mess, but it can be reshaped. Will return with more info.

What I eventually did was to give this hat to my daughter's boyfriend, who has a bigger head than I do and he really likes it! Boom! It fits him just fine! Successful passing on of the hat! He looks great in it, too. I showed him how he can form it with steam and we had a grand old time. Moving on, enjoying my hats that fit. I should have taken a picture to post here!

 

[Zombie_61]

I haven't had enough time with these to screw them up, so here goes. Up first, a Porkpie made in Italy and purchased through a website whose headquarters are allegedly in France:

It looks black, but it's actually a dark Navy Blue with a factory formed Diamond Crease, made from modern wool felt:

Next, another dark Navy Blue modern wool felt hat that looks a lot like the first one, except for the crease:

Huge difference, eh? The wool on this one is softer and not quite as coarse as on the previous Porkpie. As a result, it's a bit more comfortable. Up next, all the way from New York city, Epoch hats' version of...you guessed it, a Porkpie with a Diamond crease:

Oooh, brown! And speaking of brown, another Porkpie!

This one has the more traditional Telescope crease, but required some filler under the artificial leather sweatband 'cause it's approximately a full size too large (doggone generic sizing!). I bought it thinking "'Popeye' Doyle from The French Connection", but with my beard I'm guessing I'll get more "Heisenberg from Breaking Bad" comments when I wear it in public.

So, that's the lot so far. As always, comments and critiques are welcome!

 

[mayserwegener]

Wool thread no.2

Panos, Maybe new posts.

1940s and earlier European Soft and Stiff Wool Felt Hats (for this time period we could have separate Soft and Stiff Felt posts)

1950s to late 1960s European Soft and Siff Wool Felt Hats

Or something similar.

We can populate the threads with existing hats and add new ones as they are found.

 

[scottyrocks]

The three threads really should be combined, imho.

 

[deadlyhandsome]

I like the idea of dedicated threads hosting a niche of particular hat style, origin, finish etc, but it seems that there are a few (at least 3) about wool hats and without much traffic either. Is it a good idea to merge them in one and post there our wool soft and stiff hats? Brent? I know some of us are thrilled about finding/seeing the old European wools (not common in US). I'll point out the other overlapping threads (2 more-though one has really seen some action) I know.

*edit. Here they are:
https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/the-under-appreciated-wool-felt-hat.52165/

https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/the-wool-felt-hat-thread.53107/

I think they should be merged unless there is a meaningful distinction between the threads. I hope a bartender will give this some consideration.

 

[glider]

I have maybe 3 wool felts out of 25 hats, but I do like those. One is a Stetson western that I am partial to, another is a red fedora that I purchased at Eddie Bauer, it's my Christmas hat and I have a crusher that my mother gave me as a present. As a rule, wool felt doesn't interest me but some hats, like a bowler, are usually wool. Actually, as long as we are careful not to get a wool hat soaking wet, they should last a very long time.

 

[PanosChris]

The three threads really should be combined, imho.

I think they should be merged unless there is a meaningful distinction between the threads. I hope a bartender will give this some consideration.

Panos, Maybe new posts.

1940s and earlier European Soft and Stiff Wool Felt Hats (for this time period we could have separate Soft and Stiff Felt posts)

1950s to late 1960s European Soft and Siff Wool Felt Hats

Or something similar.

We can populate the threads with existing hats and add new ones as they are found.

Thank you for your support gentlemen and the bartenders for paying attention. It seems that we are set now. If that's our place to post our beloved woolies, soft and stiff felts, both pre- and post-war we might just need to revise the title a bit. Maybe something more general, yet catchy?

 

[Zombie_61]

...As a rule, wool felt doesn't interest me but some hats, like a bowler, are usually wool...

I'm now convinced Porkpie hats are also traditionally wool, as I've seen so few made from fur felt and those, if they were for sale, were in the custom hat range price-wise.

 

[Edward]

I haven't had enough time with these to screw them up, so here goes. Up first, a Porkpie made in Italy and purchased through a website whose headquarters are allegedly in France:

It looks black, but it's actually a dark Navy Blue with a factory formed Diamond Crease, made from modern wool felt:

Next, another dark Navy Blue modern wool felt hat that looks a lot like the first one, except for the crease:

Huge difference, eh? The wool on this one is softer and not quite as coarse as on the previous Porkpie. As a result, it's a bit more comfortable. Up next, all the way from New York city, Epoch hats' version of...you guessed it, a Porkpie with a Diamond crease:

Oooh, brown! And speaking of brown, another Porkpie!

This one has the more traditional Telescope crease, but required some filler under the artificial leather sweatband 'cause it's approximately a full size too large (doggone generic sizing!). I bought it thinking "'Popeye' Doyle from The French Connection", but with my beard I'm guessing I'll get more "Heisenberg from Breaking Bad" comments when I wear it in public.

So, that's the lot so far. As always, comments and critiques are welcome!

These look great. I love the midnight blue colour especially. You wear them well. For myself, I've always found that somehow a narrower-brimmed hat works really well worn in a casual way - anything from denims up through slacks, tie and a Harrington type stuff (or 'Casual Sinatra' as I know it in my head) - while avoiding a hint of 'Western' if one doesn't want to go down the 'cowboy' route.

I'm now convinced Porkpie hats are also traditionally wool, as I've seen so few made from fur felt and those, if they were for sale, were in the custom hat range price-wise.

I am leaning to this suspicion myself. There are a couple of production furfelt porkpie numbers I'm aware of - the Akubra Rap being one, the Christies Monk another. The Akubra is only available in black, the Monk black and grey. Wool is much more common, and in a much wider range of colours, too. I've noticed this in the last year or two as I've been toying with the idea of picking myself up a midnight blue pp, a colour I have never seen anywhere (custom aside) in furfelt. Wool does vary significantly in quality at least in terms of what rain does to it (who wants to buy an expensive, non-straw that they then have to baby if it gets wet?), and there is a big range of wool pricing, some of them close to furfelt prices.

I suspect wool all over suffers from a bit of an image problem, in the same way as CBS era Stratocasters' "variable quality" was for years erroneously if popularly blamed on the three-bolt neck design... Modern wools I'm sure can be treated (I increasingly see labels on them to the effect that they have been treated with all sorts of rainproofing), and may well shrink less. I suspect the design of the hat also makes a difference. First place I always saw a wool felt suffer was the brim; mostly they would start out flat, then gradually droop over time if worn a lot in rain. A hat like a bowler with that design and level of rigidity (even if leaning to a softer crown, as per Lock's own 'City Bowler') is probably less prone to that sort of drooping with rain. PP similarly I think it's about the cut of the brim. Main thing I want in a pp is to be able to snap down the brim at the front, a la the Chairman. Not really viable on a wider wool brim, but with the way a pp is constructed, it usually seems to be viable on a decent wool number.

 

[glider]

Yep, modern wool probably gets a bad rap, and there is wool, fur blends. I've seen some wool blends that you really can't tell what it is, nice hand, looks good but not fur felt. Stetson has started producing some hats that they don't say what they are. I e-mailed them and asked about that and was told that if the hat didn't say fur felt on the sweat band it wasn't fur felt. OK, I can live with that, actually if the price is around 100 bucks, then it probably isn't fir felt. On the other hand, if you can purchase a hat that you really like for around a hundred bucks go for it. It seems like most new fur felts are starting at 200 and that is a beaver blend. Of course, most of us look for vintage fur felt and seldom buy a new hat.

 

[PanosChris]

Here is a French Wool homburg and recent find, probably from 20s-30s

@mayserwegener , @Daniele Tanto , @steur , @Mean Eyed Matt and all woolie-lovers would you care to post some of these "inferior" hats here?

 

[Zombie_61]

These look great. I love the midnight blue colour especially. You wear them well. For myself, I've always found that somehow a narrower-brimmed hat works really well worn in a casual way - anything from denims up through slacks, tie and a Harrington type stuff (or 'Casual Sinatra' as I know it in my head)...

Thank you for the compliment! My role models for what I call the "east coast Porkpie"--essentially a re-purposed fedora with a lowered crown crease and a minimum 2-1/4" wide brim up all the way around--were Ed Norton (Art Carney) on The Honeymooners, Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on All in the Family, and Paulie Pennino (Burt Young), Rocky Balboa's brother-in-law in the Rocky movie franchise, all very much "blue collar, working class" characters:

Yes, the brim on the navy blue hat in the photo I posted above is too stingy to be part of that east coast style, but influences are influences and we all do what we will with them. Besides, a Porkpie is a Porkpie is a Porkpie...

...There are a couple of production furfelt porkpie numbers I'm aware of - the Akubra Rap being one...

I'm fairly certain Akubra has discontinued the Rap, at least for the time being. Hats Direct removed it from their website, Everything Australia says it's sold out and allows you to put your e-mail address on a list for when/if it becomes available again, and another website (can't recall which one) says it's no longer in production, and also put the Hampton in the same "get one while they last" category. As far as the Hampton is concerned, if that happens I'm hoping they'll be back in the lineup once all of this Covid Pandemic stuff is behind us and things return to some semblance of what used to be normal; I still want one in Federation Navy.

 

[Daniele Tanto]

@mayserwegener , @Daniele Tanto , @steur , @Mean Eyed Matt and all woolie-lovers would you care to post some of these "inferior" hats here?

I'll follow your Panos advice, moderately.
For the past few years, Steve and I have been preaching in the desert about the quality of wool hats. We did it in single posts and for specific hats, but we always found ourselves in a modest sea of indifference, or in the usual complaint of "I had a wool hat that has shrunk and lost its shape" and so on. We have written about the use of wool as a primary material to make felt especially in Europe, we have magnified its use in very elegant and rare quality hats, we have enhanced it in blends or heathered felts, but the finish is the one mentioned above.
I tell you in all honesty Panos that I have lost hope of making an effective contribution to certain threads that invariably end up in trite and coy topics. Do we still want to talk about the qualities, the sizes and the bankruptcy of Borsalino? Of the absolute quality of any felt other than simple rabbit? Or other amenities that invariably appear in some threads.
I will do my best, hoping that novices and and also olds do not have the patience to go and read what has been written for any and all topics in the past.
Sic transit gloria mundi

 

[PanosChris]

I'll follow your Panos advice, moderately.
For the past few years, Steve and I have been preaching in the desert about the quality of wool hats. We did it in single posts and for specific hats, but we always found ourselves in a modest sea of indifference, or in the usual complaint of "I had a wool hat that has shrunk and lost its shape" and so on. We have written about the use of wool as a primary material to make felt especially in Europe, we have magnified its use in very elegant and rare quality hats, we have enhanced it in blends or heathered felts, but the finish is the one mentioned above.
I tell you in all honesty Panos that I have lost hope of making an effective contribution to certain threads that invariably end up in trite and coy topics. Do we still want to talk about the qualities, the sizes and the bankruptcy of Borsalino? Of the absolute quality of any felt other than simple rabbit? Or other amenities that invariably appear in some threads.
I will do my best, hoping that novices and and also olds do not have the patience to go and read what has been written for any and all topics in the past.
Sic transit gloria mundi

Thank you Daniele, much appreciated! I couldn't agree more with you. The European wool centres- e.g., Monza in Italy, Guben in Germany and Esperaza in France- have produced some magnificent wool hats in the past and although there are plenty of examples and tons of info in the respective threads, the intention was to have something more concentrated on wool felts (pics and/or info), in one place (also, many pics from the old posts have unfortunately been lost). That could may serve as a single source of inspiration (and info?) for those in appreciation (we might actually be more than we think) and maybe as a chance for reconsideration for the others, or not

 

[glider]

I like the idea and I have nothing against wool felt when done well. Not getting your hat soaked thru really isn't difficult. Contrary to popular opinion, I do have enough sense to come in out of the rain!

 

[Zombie_61]

I like the idea and I have nothing against wool felt when done well. Not getting your hat soaked thru really isn't difficult. Contrary to popular opinion, I do have enough sense to come in out of the rain!

That, and there are now so many sources for us to figure out what the weather is going to be like in our particular corner of the world before we even leave home that the difficult part is choosing which of those sources to believe.

Until recently I've only ever owned truly cheap wool felt hats--the kind you'd find in a costume or a souvenir shop, or get just to keep the sun off. And, sure enough, stop wearing them for a while and they shrink to an unwearable size simply sitting on the shelf. So that was my only "problem" with wool hats. Now that I've acquired a few better made wool hats, I rather like the ones that fit me properly (one needed padding, ugh!) and if something should happen to them I won't mind too much because they didn't cost nearly as much as any of my fur felt hats.

 

[glider]

It occurs to me that I have a few hats that I'm not really sure about the felt, it doesn't say in the hat what it is. A Mallory and a couple Dobbs 5th Ave.s , I assumed they were fur felt but I don't know that. Dobbs has produced some 5th Ave,s that are wool. The Mallory, who knows? They feel like fur but I'm not sure I can tell the difference in feel. I've seen wool felt that had a very good hand. The Dobbs Gordon is extremely light weight, if it's wool it's a damn good one but then I have a Stetson crusher that is very light also that is wool felt. I am to the point where a hat must really appeal for me to purchase it, wool or fur or whatever so who cares if the price is right. I asked a well-known car collector if an MGTD I was looking at was worth the money asked, he said sure but that's no fun!