"Too much crown"

[Fletch]

But it's only about style to us. To a guy like Gus, style is what his typical customer wants. Anything too far outside of that is bad style - you might as well be wearing a glow-in-the-dark basketball on your head as a 6" straight-sided crown.

In other words, the customer is NOT always right. Indeed, he is less likely to be right than the craftsman, who has experience. And in skilled craft, experience always outranks knowledge.

That, of course, means that if there is no one left who remembers when something was done, it can't - it shouldn't - be done. There is only knowledge left, no more experience.

 

[CRH]

We should have a too much crown contest. No weak stomachs allowed!

Go float your boat and pass the Pez .

 

[Chuck Bobuck]

We should have a too much crown contest. No weak stomachs allowed!

I'm game...whatchyou got?

 

[Goose.]

Now, THAT is funny!!!!
Funniest thing I've seen here recently Chuck.
Others could take a tip from you and lighten up a bit. WHAT A HOOT!!!!
Thanks!

 

[Chuck Bobuck]

Now, THAT is funny!!!!
Funniest thing I've seen here recently Chuck.
Others could take a tip from you and lighten up a bit. WHAT A HOOT!!!!
Thanks!

Thanks Goose, appreciate the comment. I do what I can.

 

[Tomasso]

...or maybe there is too much crown?...

 

[quintox]

Funny

 

[handlebar bart]

I'm game...whatchyou got?

Needs a wider ribbonlol lol

 

[metropd]

All I can say is Gus always gets the proportions right when I ask for his advice.

 

[Belegnole]

But it's only about style to us. To a guy like Gus, style is what his typical customer wants. Anything too far outside of that is bad style - you might as well be wearing a glow-in-the-dark basketball on your head as a 6" straight-sided crown.

In other words, the customer is NOT always right. Indeed, he is less likely to be right than the craftsman, who has experience. And in skilled craft, experience always outranks knowledge.

That, of course, means that if there is no one left who remembers when something was done, it can't - it shouldn't - be done. There is only knowledge left, no more experience.

Fletch I am tempted to agree with you but I can't....well not completely.

If we say that this is how Gus feels, it may be true. To say however that all hatters or even experienced craftsmen think in this manner would be in my opinion incorrect. Take myself for example...I have 20 years experience in the jewelery trade. I title myself a Metalsmith though many would know me as a goldsmith. I have taken raw gold through the smelting process though to a finished product with only hand tools or all the way up using modern techniques. To me style is not what is now but a concept of taste which changes over time and to understand it you must know more than one style. So the idea that a master of a field would wrap himself in one style based on the current one doesn't sound quite right. However we all do have our personal tastes and Gus or any other craftsman definitely has their own. I for example just don't like "white" gold. In fact I severely dislike the whole marketing campaign and how the industry went about misrepresenting what they were selling people. However I would make or sell whatever the customer wanted not what I preferred. That brings me to something I have been thinking since first reading this.....Maybe Gus wasn't talking about the hat as much as what he thought would look best on the customer......too much crown (for you)...I also think that the only person who would think that experience always out does knowledge would be the craftsman who has experience but little knowledge and less wisdom. The best craftsmen I have ever known always strived to gain greater knowledge. Now of course we can be a snotty snippy group when someone would question our "expertise".....lol

 

[CRH]

I'm game...whatchyou got?

Dr. Zeus warned me about people like you, Chuck lol.

 

[Fletch]

More about craft

This is a quote from a poster, whose handle I will withhold, on a tailoring forum, whose name I will also withhold. (Date: Nov. 2007.)

Some of the best teachers of crafts don't explain anything. You do as your told. Even though what you are doing makes no since and seems completely wrong. When finished your answers and more have all been answered and you understand why they would explain nothing.

This, I think, is what anyone is up against who wants to revive a style after the tradition has been cut off.

There's a part of the manual trade work ethic that dictates that those who can't do, talk, and those who can do keep quiet. It comes down to a long tradition of secrecy and a deep distrust of anything that resembles public relations or spin. Thus the best explain nothing. They need not, because of their position as masters (and all that word implies - we are getting into workways that pre-date democracy, or indeed, any Enlightenment nonsense about the dignity of the individual).

The problem for the client is that without some tools of explanation, and a craftsman trained in understanding them, he can't communicate what he wants unless the craftsman already understands it. Any teaching is exclusively one-way - from the craftsman and within the craft - so, as I said earlier, experience trumps everything. No "whys," and no understanding until the work is done, means no reasoning, no questioning, and no imagining.

The questions then become:
- How does a style become approved and acceptable in a system where neither the craftsman nor the client has the right of approval, and the usual gatekeeper (the fashion industry) is not even in the picture?
- Is there even any place for different styles - old, new, syntheses of both - in such a system?
- And if there is no place for them, is that a reason the old crafts in clothing are dying out?

"You understand why they would explain nothing." And once you understand, you too explain nothing.

What am I missing here? Am I just insufficiently wise in the ways of the elder and the acolyte? Do I need to go into the woods with my hatter or my tailor, beat drums and wear dirt?

 

[Flatch]

FWIW

I stopped in two weeks ago yesterday and met Gus. I brought him a fur felt fedora that needed (I thought) a slight downsizing and major brim trimming. I asked the lady who met me, who I later learned is his wife, how much it'd cost for him to do this. She asked me to try it on first.

Gus heard her say this, turned around, pointed and grinned, saying "Dat hat's too big on you!" I knew that - it's a 7 5/8 whereas I figured I was somewhere around 7 3/8 (his wife confirmed this). So Gus comes around to the front counter and gave it a once over.

"Nice hat, good quality, good shape [condition]" he said. The fact that the hat was big on me is what was making the brim look too way big...like zoot big. At least that's what I understood Gus to be explaining to me.

He said downsizing it was no problem, and he'd put in a new sweat (which it needed) and liner, plus a different color ribbon if I wanted (I did). I also asked him to reshape by pointing to a C-crown he made, instead of the kind of longish center dent it came with.

Long and short is, for $50 (more than I gave for the hat) he'd get all this done and mail it back to me. Sounded fine to me, so I left the hat in his charge. He said I'd have it within two weeks.

Then we chatted for a good twenty or so minutes. Gus likes to talk politics, so be warned if you come in (he and I are pretty much in alignment so it was no problem). Showed me pics of himself with Bill Cosby, who always stops in and will be when he comes back in town soon, and Pavoratti (always playing at his workstation), Red Skelton and others.

He also showed me some of his work but only when I asked. Gus never asked me to try anything on or if I was looking for anything else. I guess he figured I'd ask if I wanted something. That was nice.

I also got a killer shoeshine from the gentleman whose name escapes me now. Wear your best leather if you go in, you'll be glad you did!

Gus also takes an interest in your family, if they come in with you. He was very nice to our 11 month old, who took a shine to him (but then she does with everyone right now).

Anyway...yesterday (Saturday) morning the phone rings. It's Gus...he says he's been out for a few days due to an infection and is behind in his work. He apologized that my hat had not arrived in the 2 weeks he promised. I was not worried, told him to take his time. I guess he at least got the thing stripped out b/c he said he thinks he'll only take off 1/8" or so from the brim...maybe it was so big on me that shrinking it down to my size takes care of the awning it has for a brim. He said he should have it in the mail to me this week, and said to say hi to "the bambini" (?) for me.

As to his attitude of the other day during the original poster's visit, I'd say that's fully understandable as he's recovering from an infection, especially for a guy in his early 80s. You just had the bad luck of catching him when he was under the weather. Not that you'd know that when you stopped in; no doubt he's old school and wouldn't say if he had the chance. But it would explain what you saw there. Also, based on my 45 minutes or so at Batsakes', he does have his share of loud rabble come in off the street, and the ladies tend to run interference for him on this while he's behind the counter by the side window, listening to opera. He tends to insulate himself as much as he can back there, I suspect, and pops out only so often.

As for my hat: proof is in the pudding, so if anyone's interested in seeing what Gus did with it, I'll be happy to post a pic of it when it arrives.

PS Just read what Fletch said about masters and their well-earned confidence. Gus said over the phone, regarding cutting the brim, that he got a good look at my mug when I was in the store. When he said how much he now wanted to take off, he added "trust me." So we'll see!

 

[Neil]

I'm with Gus

I have a few hats, among them a Fed IV, and a custom made retro-style beaver felt.
I know everyone is crazy these days about high, stovepipe crowns (especially with this new Johnny Depp movie), but they do nothing for me. I vastly prefer the lower crown of a Stetson Pinnacle I bought from Carter, and the moderate look of an Optimo felt I bought from Graham Thompson last fall. (Actually, that hat has a high crown, too, but a very deep bash and a taper that offsets it).
I's obviously a matter of personal taste. But to say that Gus Miller, who has been making hats for 57 years, hasn't had much experience with the high crown look is a tad silly.

 

[Fletch]

I's obviously a matter of personal taste. But to say that Gus Miller, who has been making hats for 57 years, hasn't had much experience with the high crown look is a tad silly.

Well, 57 years ago it was 1952. The high-crown look was already old hat (heh). The straightsided crown wasn't always the rule by then, either. By the late 50s both were pretty much pfftt. Looking back from the POV of someone in the business that long, you too might feel that it wasn't the way things ought to be done.

1952 hat ads

The large illo is the '52 Whippet. Compare with the '48 Whippet.

 

["Skeet" McD]

This is a quote from a poster, whose handle I will withhold, on a tailoring forum, whose name I will also withhold. (Date: Nov. 2007.)

The questions then become:
- How does a style become approved and acceptable in a system where neither the craftsman nor the client has the right of approval, and the usual gatekeeper (the fashion industry) is not even in the picture?
- Is there even any place for different styles - old, new, syntheses of both - in such a system?
- And if there is no place for them, is that a reason the old crafts in clothing are dying out?

"You understand why they would explain nothing." And once you understand, you too explain nothing.

What am I missing here? Am I just insufficiently wise in the ways of the elder and the acolyte? Do I need to go into the woods with my hatter or my tailor, beat drums and wear dirt?

Fletch,
Your posts--and those you choose to send on, like this one--are always well worth reading. May I jump in with a thought?

I've spent a good deal of time around excellent craftsmen--old-school, direct from the master/apprentice system your anonymous poster describes, as well as neocraftsmen, young folks reviving--sometimes entirely on their own hook--craft traditions dead or perimortal. I pretty much agree with what your poster says and the questions he asks but think a very important part is missing:

The true craftsman is master of his art: he can DO anything; and--if he is actually a craftsman, not an auteur-artist type--he WILL do anything his customer asks him to do. He may not like it...but the best ones will answer any questions asked, describe difficulties that might arise down the road (if any)...and then keep their mouth closed, do the work, and pick up their pay.

I--and you--are members of a craft that no longer IS a craft except in very small areas (like studio musicians): musicians. The Empfindsamkeit/early Romantic movement put "paid" to craftworkers like....oh, Bach and Mozart--and everyone else before them....who turned out their compositions in the same way, and for the same reasons, that a hat maker turns out hats: for sale, to put bread on the table. Only after that period do composers--and musicians in general--begin to consider themselves "artists"...with the self-indulgence that--in large measure--follows in the wake of such a redefinition.

Just one man's opinion.

"Skeet"

 

[Tampahound]

He has bad taste in hats...and a hatter...sad.

 

[CRH]

All thith philothophy really curlth my brim. And whatth all thith about 'too muchth clown anyway?

 

[Tomasso]

Maybe Gus wasn't talking about the hat as much as what he thought would look best on the customer......too much crown (for you)

I assumed that this is what Gus meant. Now if Hoss Cartwright had been wearing the lid.......

 

[Doublegun]

I assumed that this is what Gus meant. Now if Hoss Cartwright had been wearing the lid.......

It is possible that's what he meant. Now I really don't want to post photos of me under that lid.