Toppers Unite

[Rmccamey]

About as nice a "modern" topper as I have seen.

Here are a few pictures of the sweatband and the back seam. You are correct that this one is reeded. Don't feel like trying to turn the sweatband inside out as they can be brittle as you well know. Hope these pix help.
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[TimmyV]

About as nice a "modern" topper as I have seen.

Thanks. I feel lucky to have it in my collection.

 

[Faux Brummell]

My grey Herbert Johnson top hat recently made its debut at Bergdorf Goodman for afternoon tea.
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[CraigEster]

Here are a few pictures of the sweatband and the back seam. You are correct that this one is reeded. Don't feel like trying to turn the sweatband inside out as they can be brittle as you well know. Hope these pix help.
View attachment 653302 View attachment 653303 View attachment 653304

Thanks for the photos. The sweatband looks really well-seated and it's probably one of the comfiest top hats out there.
Could you slide the hatband up a bit to see if there's stitching going through the crown wall? If there is stitching, it'd be interesting to see if it's done by hand or by machine.
To safely slide the felt bands up and down, rotate with the lay of the silk and only go up a little per rotation. This won't mess up the silk too bad, and you slide down the same way. A wipe with a brush or velvet pad will touch up the hat after it's back into place.
These US brand silk hats from the 1930s were largely imported and rebranded, with Stetson only providing the liner. The cost of making these hats in the USA was too high, so they made the hats in interwar Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. After the war, nearly all came from the Netherlands.

 

[Steve1857]

My grey Herbert Johnson top hat recently made its debut at Bergdorf Goodman for afternoon tea.
View attachment 653769

What a wonderfully dressed couple! Nothing faux about your look at all.

Herbert Johnson's Topper certainly looks in its right element.

 

[Steve1857]

Thanks for the photos. The sweatband looks really well-seated and it's probably one of the comfiest top hats out there.
Could you slide the hatband up a bit to see if there's stitching going through the crown wall? If there is stitching, it'd be interesting to see if it's done by hand or by machine.
To safely slide the felt bands up and down, rotate with the lay of the silk and only go up a little per rotation. This won't mess up the silk too bad, and you slide down the same way. A wipe with a brush or velvet pad will touch up the hat after it's back into place.
These US brand silk hats from the 1930s were largely imported and rebranded, with Stetson only providing the liner. The cost of making these hats in the USA was too high, so they made the hats in interwar Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. After the war, nearly all came from the Netherlands.

Interesting information, Craig.

Do you have a source link?

 

[CraigEster]

Interesting information, Craig.

Do you have a source link?

I need to find the link, but the source was a US Senate hearing regarding tariffs on silk hats and the material used to make them in the early 20th century.

In that time, the US had an opposition to tariffs whenever they didn't help domestic industry. Industry representatives would go to Congress and testify on the impact of tariffs and whether they should be increased or abandoned. In regard to this, hat makers went to Congress and asked that the tariff on silk hatter's plush be lowered because it couldn't be made in the US and the tariff thus protected nothing. Congress agreed and lowered the import tax to the minimum at the time, meaning the tax on hat plush was lower than the tax on basic cloth like muslin, whereas other luxury silks were more expensive.

The inverse happened with the tax on finished hats. Initially, hat companies asked to increase the tax on silk hats because small makers were importing them from Central Europe and re-branding them, competing with the big US makers that domestically produced them. By the 1920s, this approach was abandoned and everyone was importing foreign hats.

The details are vague because the testimony that was recorded wasn't particularly detailed, but in essence all but the most expensive silk hats were made in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. After the Second World War, I believe all the silk hats were made in the Netherlands.

The only way to know for certain would be to pull the liner out and look at the maker's marks, and to be intimately familiar with the various marks from different countries. All the ones I've seen look barely intelligible so I don't know if this is possible.

Another issue facing silk hat production in the United States was the slowness of training new workers and disinterest from young hatters in the 1930s onward. In the end of the book The Top Hat, there's an article from I believe 1944 in which it is said that most of the American silk hatters were middle-aged or older, and all the young workers wanted to make felt hats.

I will look in my research for more details, there's a lot of Senate hearings to go through.

As for the hatband thing, that's just regular maintenance that I do. I've been developing my skills fixing silk hats.