I have already discussed the difference between trilby hats and fedoras in an earlier blog: Language Barriers: Trilby vs. Fedora, but I thought it made sense to clarify the difference between flat caps and newsboy caps as well.

The flat cap is a rounded cap made of many materials, such as cotton, wool or leather which has a stiff brim or peak at the front, it provides sun protection and helps the hat keep its shape.  They come in a variety of patterns and colors, but traditionally it would have been a solid color or a classic pattern like herringbone or tweed.  The cap is usually sewn together at the back from a few strips of the same material; it is sewn this way to give the top of the hat one uniform piece of material so the pattern appears even.  It is usually finished with a satin or silk lining for comfort and warmth.  The cap can either have a snap at the front of the cap to keep the material from the crown attached to the peak or it can simply be sewn down with a few stitches to keep it in place.   

The newsboy cap is made from the same materials and fabrics and has a very similar shape to the flat cap, but it is sewn together not from the back but from the top of the hat, (the sewn parts can look like the slices of a pie or pizza).    It may also be referred to as a baker boy hat, an eight panel or a gatsby cap.  It is almost always finished with a button on the top where all the materials come together.  Traditionally, the newsboy will have eight panels sewn together, the reason why it is also named the eight panel hat.  There is a very oversized version of the newsboy cap called the big apple; it is made with the same techniques, just with more material.

I have included two photos made of the same material to show the difference between the two styles.  The flat cap is a narrower style where the newsboy is rounder, wider and fuller.  For someone looking to buy one of these caps, there is no rhyme or reason to suggest one or the other, it comes down to taste.  It is something that you must try on and see which you prefer.  They are very versatile and can be worn with either a suit or with a t-shirt and jeans.

Have a look at our large selection of flat caps and newsboy caps. 

Jason

Village Hats

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

www.villagehatshop.com

In the early 20th century there was an unwritten rule that one was not supposed to wear straw hats past September 15.  If someone was seen wearing a straw hat after this date, they were, at minimum, subjecting themselves to ridicule, and it was a tradition for youths to knock straw hats off of wearers’ heads and stomp on them-a kind of license for hooliganism.  This tradition was well established, and newspapers of the day would often warn people that the fifteenth was approaching, and people would be advised to switch to felt hats.

In 1922, this tradition got out of hand and led to what is now known as the Straw Hat Riots. The riot began on September 13,1922, two days before the unspoken date, when a group of youths decided to get an early jump on the tradition. This group began in the former “Mulberry Bend” area of Manhattan; they removed and stomped hats worn by factory workers who were employed in the area. The more innocuous stomping turned into a brawl when the youths went after a group of dock workers’ hats, and the dock workers fought back. The brawl soon stopped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge and was eventually broken up by police, leading to some arrests.

Despite the initial brawl being stopped by police, the fights continued to escalate the next evening. One man claimed that after his hat was taken,  the culprits joined a mob of about 1,000 who were snatching hats all along Amsterdam Avenue. Several men were hospitalized from the beatings they received after resisting.  Many arrests were made. Police were slow to respond to the riots, although several off-duty police officers found themselves caught up in the brawl when rioters attempted to snatch their hats.

Though we are sure that something like this would not happen in today’s world, after reading a news story like that we thought you might want to take a look at our selection of winter hats offering a wide choice of felt hats.

Jason

Village Hats

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

www.villagehatshop.com

A novice buyer should be careful when buying a fine quality panama hat; the retail market is neither clear nor consistent regarding grading and pricing. Because panama hats can vary considerably in price, we have included a quick rundown of why the price varies so much.

First, prices are usually determined by the fineness of the weave. The straw used to make panama hats can continually be made thinner, or finer, by dividing the strand of straw in half. Every time the straw width is halved (via fingernail), the amount of work required to weave the hat is multiplied four times.

Second, you may see some sellers mentioning Cuenca, Brisa or Montecristi panama hats. These are cities in Ecuador, but it does not guarantee that the hat originated from there or that it is of a certain quality. For instance, Montecristi is synonymous with the finest Panama hats in the world; but, be careful because qualities vary considerably even with hats from Montecristi. We only try to use these specific names if we are assured by our manufacturers that the hats came from those cities and are of a quality usually associated with that name.

Thrid, you may see grades used on our website and by other sellers.  These grades can vary considerably from hat to hat.  Two different companies could both be selling grade 8 panama hats, but they could be wildly different qualities, so it is really only a reference to roughly gauge the quality of the hat.  We do use the grades on some hats, when our manufacturer has supplied us with the grade number and we agree that the hats are that quality.  I will continue to use the grades, because it is an easy way to roughly describe the quality, but please understand that it is not an industry standard and can vary from seller to seller. 

Fourth, you may see companies selling rollable or foldable panama hats for a really low cost.  All I would say is that you can fold any hat, it may just not pop back to shape after it has been folded.  So if you see a rollable panama hat for £25, my guess is that it will fall apart with in a few months if you fold it.  With higher quality panama hats, you may find a great hat that can be folded, but constantly rolling and unrolling your Panama hat will shorten its life span, as the straw will eventually crack.  If you are a stickler for getting the absolute most time of service from products that you purchase, I recommend not rolling your hat.  With these major points covered, we should now be able to move on to pricing. 

(£30 – £50) Panama hats priced from 30 to 50 pounds will take a few days to weave and are typically considered to be between grades of 3 and 5 (again, these grades can vary from merchant to merchant so please understand that grades are only a rule of thumb).

(£60 – £100) Panama hats priced from 60 to 100 pounds can take a week to a month to weave and are typically considered to be between grades of 5 and 10.

(£100 and up) Panama hats priced from 100 pounds and up can take months to weave. Due to the fineness of the weave, only a select few weavers have the skill to make these. These panama hats are typically considered to between grades of 10 and up. 

I hope this helps somewhat. If you buy one, know you’re buying a hand made item with centuries of tradition. Click the following if you want to see our panama hats.

Jason

Village Hats

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

www.villagehatshop.com

This difference in hat names was intriguing to me.  As an American living in the UK, there are many times when my US English is different from the UK English.  There are many days where our customer service staff makes fun of the American’s spelling or choice of words.  I say that this is due to the constant change or the fluidity of language.  Terms come and go; children have a very different set of terms compared to their parents.  Americans not only have a funny accent, they have different terms and spellings.  Language changes and evolves constantly.  I notice these differences occur in the business of selling hats as well.  There are many US hat terms that do not translate well here in the UK.  There are terms that have fallen in to disuse or are now pretty much extinct.  One of the first blogs I wrote was about the different uses of the terms trilby and fedora on the two continents.  The review below highlights an example of the differences involving the pork pie hat. 

As mentioned above, this is a review.  There are parts where he recommends us as a company.  I am aware that this is a little bit self-promoting, but I feel posting this as a blog makes sense as he informed me, a hatter, about the different terms used in the UK.  We love hearing about this stuff.  Anyone interested in sending in information on hats should email us at cs@hatsandcaps.co.uk and we can add it to the blog.  I hope you enjoy –  

It is often not ideal to order clothing online; this company is different, the phone service was excellent chatty and helpful, the courier was excellent too and went to a lot of trouble, a lot of companies forget that the final stage, delivery, is as important if not more important than any other.

The Bailey Black Jett Pork Pie is the kind of hat I got, it came properly packaged in an useful storage box too.   I did mention before somewhere the irony that, when I received it, I found out that Bailey Hats are made about 20 miles from where I will be going to live in Pennsylvania, that is kind of strange I thought?   Anyway the hat is perfect and the phone people were able to help me navigate the tricky business of hat sizes here and in the USA, so I got a perfect fit, very reasonably priced for what it is, even in pounds sterling and generally goes well with ‘modernist’ clothing.  The hat, the maker claims with some pride is ‘Made in the USA’, for those to whom that matters.  Quality wise, by the way,  it compares well with English hats of three times the price.

There is a kind of obscurity about what a ‘Pork Pie’ is.  Well we are not doing definitional science here and it is fair enough to insist, as a lot of English hatmakers do, that a Pork Pie is what I would call a trilby with a pork pie crown; what Locke the Hatters call a ‘Sinatra’, a very nice hat that one is too by the way… however to my mind the Bailey Jett is really what a Pork Pie should be:  it is the kind of hat a kid of about five would draw sitting right on top of your head, a kind of iconic hat.  There is, as always, a lot of room for variation in brim width and a host of details and it is worth looking up the variations of the selection that Hatsandcaps do which is a lot wider than most dealers.  The Jett Pork Pie though is MY hat, just my kind of hat.  I still hold that whatever other details and variations it has  a Pork Pie has essentially a symmetrical brim and an indented rimed crown?  Though on the principle of ‘When in Rome…’ I accept that here the term is reserved for a wider range of styles including what I would call a Trilby of the Sinatra type.

Tudor Eynon

Guangzhou (Canton) China, May, 2010

How important are blue skies? I don’t mean metaphorical blue skies, but literal blue skies. Earlier this month I returned from China. For the first time, I was struck by the general discontentment of my employee there, Chinese born and raised. I’ve known her many years. We first met when this smart and ambitious young woman – let’s call her Cindy – sent unsolicited emails (in the days when people were still reading them) from her homeland to various businesses, offering her services as a conduit to Chinese hat manufacturing. The personal and authentic nature of Cindy’s correspondence prompted a reply (I did in fact have inklings of expanding our inchoate Asian import business so her timing was fortuitous). After exchanging some emails, and becoming ”acquainted”, I decided to test the waters by initiating a process with a goal of bringing in a single product from China shepherded by Cindy. Sourcing, sampling, pricing ultimately led to an order and delivery. It went well. Fast forward seven or eight years and Cindy is now in the loop of a high percentage of our inventory. When we first met face-to-face, many years ago, she was everything I expected: bright, well-organized, hard-working, upbeat and appreciative of the opportunities that her country’s burgeoning economy in combination with her skills and ambition afforded her in the modern world.

On this latest visit, Cindy was different. She now does not like living in China. She was glum. She dreads the prospect of living life without blue skies, not only for herself but more so for her three-year old son. She lives in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in southern China. Until this past year she didn’t know what life was like in a place where one could regularly see a blue sky. Her husband’s company, however, recently transferred him to Spain and for three months she joined him in Madrid, a land where the sky was blue. For her, there is no turning back. She wants out of China.

I met her in the city of Guangzhou (formerly Canton), in the same province as Shenzhen. The sky was gray, smog covered, for the week that I was there and she made a point to call my attention to it. Although this discussion of feeling smothered by the inability to see the sun was all quite personal and literal, I cannot help but consider its broader implications. Is China’s poor record of custodianship of the environment a looming problem? I think so. As its citizenry continues to mature, their willingness to live in a place where smog blots out the sun will be less tolerated. Moreover, finding out that there are blue skies elsewhere when one didn’t even know they existed speaks to a much bigger issue that might be relevant to China’s future. What else don’t the Chinese people know about the world outside their borders? And what will happen when the people learn these things, as they surely will?

As one who follows the current geopolitical climate, I am aware of the pressure being placed on China by much of the world to allow their currency – the renmimbi – to appreciate to the market rate of exchange against other currencies (China pegs this exchange so that their export market will remain vibrant). At the risk of oversimplifying, the argument being made by the USA and others is that China needs to keep its economic engine humming via growth of its domestic market and rely less on exports thereby contributing to a more stable world economy. To that point, I was struck by the emergence of both large USA-style major malls as well as smaller strip-centers being developed in the midst of huge apartment complexes. I visited a large mall in Beijing, dragging Cindy along to a place that she heretofore had not ventured. She could not fathom how businesses were selling merchandise at the ridiculously high prices indicated on the hang tags. Finally, she came to terms with this new shopping phenomenon by understanding that China had a small percentage of its population that could shop at these stores; yet, that small percentage, given China’s 1.2 billion population, is significant enough to support the malls and the Chinese entrepreneurs that are opening Western-style shops.

So from what I see first-hand, China’s economy is adjusting and in fact is transitioning a greater percentage of its GDP to its domestic market. However, there are still millions of its citizens moving from very poor rural areas to factory towns incrementally improving their lot in life (see my 24-slide presentation of a hat factory) so the cheap labor force supporting the manufacturing sector can, as well, likely survive a long time. By controlling its currency and other state-run levers of its economy, China, given its size and various economic classes (ironic for so-called Communists), can transition from an export driven economy to a more mixed economy in a time-line fundamentally of its own choosing.

This observation had me shaking my head as I traveled the country. “How can the USA – or any country for that matter – compete?” To this economic advantage, add Chinese cultural values such as their work ethic and their high regard for education including the learning of others’ languages, and future dominance on the world stage appears inevitable.

Unless, in this uncertain age where change can and does happen with little warning, the dissatisfaction of the person who sat next to me in the taxi, complaining about the dearth of blue skies, tells a more compelling tale about China’s future.

Fred Belinsky

www.villagehatshop.com

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

There is a book – perhaps even a serious scholarly research project – waiting to be written on this rich and varied subject.  People have been harvesting plants endemic to their region of the world and fashioning the derived natural material into headwear as long as there have been humankind.  Today, go virtually anywhere in the world and one will find the latest iterations of this very long history of making hats from plants.

Some, like people on the western coast of South America (primarily what is now Ecuador), have taken this to the level of a highly refined craft.  Carludovica palmata (paja toquilla to the locals) is harvested, cleaned, bleached, dried, split length-wise into various width sizes with the finest being the size of thread, bundled according to size and quality, sold to weavers who can take months to weave a single hat, sold again to middlemen who sell yet again to hatters who finally block the material into any number of popular shapes, finally adding sweatbands and trimmings.  These straw hats make their way to the market in most of the world as Panama hats (not from Panama but so named because of the hat’s trading route explosion onto world markets during the building of the Panama Canal). 

Other cultures have similar traditions.  We here at the Village Hat Shop have employees whose cultural roots are from The Philippines.  One day I was presented a finely woven straw hat traditional to the native people of Negros Occidental.  The material comes from the inside leaves of the acaba tree.  The hat is light and airy and, like Panama hats, the product of painstaking work.  The people wear the hat for protection from the blazing sun of the region as well as for provincial festivals.  Buntal, a popular straw hat material in North America and Europe -also fine and light weight-comes from yet another Filipino plant, the buri palm tree, from Baliuag, Bulacan.  The list of exquisite straw hats made by indigenous people from endemic materials is very long.  The Native Americans of the Northwest make a cedar bark hat.  The native peoples from California make a hat from pine needles.  Raffia is one of the most popular straw materials in the world.  The island of Madagascar is the home of high quality raffia, but variations of the plant are also found in Africa.  Many of the beautifully adorned crowns of feathers, shells, animal parts, and skins that we associate with African arts are started from a base of raffia straw.  Baku, another lightweight, very fine, and expensive material that is in high demand in wealthier countries, comes from the taipot palm in Malabar and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  For my money, one of the best straw hat values in the world today is the very durable sewn-braid palm leaf hat from Guatemala, yet another example of a plant and a people in an enduring relationship.

Milan straw has a complicated and controversial history.  The original material (if I have my facts straight) was a hand-braided wheat straw from Italy (hence the name Milan from the Italian city of the same name).  Real milan, the natural material, is still available but becoming prohibitively expensive for most hat buyers.  The Chinese make something synthetic and call it milan; this is mostly what is found in the hat market today.  [Synthetic "straws" are all over the place and not the topic of this article other than this: if you are a buyer of what you assume is a "straw" hat, beware.]  The Japanese make a material from hemp (I need a botanist to tell me if hemp bears a close relationship to the original) that is a natural material facsimile of milan.

Some cultures whip up a hat in minutes from plants in their area.  When I visited Tahiti in 1981, the local people would impress tourists by cutting palm fronds and weaving, from the unaltered material, a good hat for sun protection in 5 to 10 minutes.  The hat starts out as green and becomes brown over time.  When it finally becomes too brittle to properly function, one simply tosses it and makes another.  Many cultures – likely the majority – operate somewhere between the extremes of complicated Panama hat making and simple Tahitian hat making.  Perhaps, from a global perspective, the most iconic hat on the planet fits this description-the conical hat we associate with Asia.  The shape has likely prevailed throughout time and place because of the simplicity of its design and supreme functionality.  I have witnessed the hat as good rain gear, excellent sun protection, and a good wind break (one simply tilts into the wind).  It’s very strong albeit lightweight; a structural engineer can explain why.  The straw material varies from place to place.  I own Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai variations of the style.  Each is made well and with minimal effort in order to achieve the hat’s purpose.  Sometimes, one will find elaborations on the theme, but for the most part the hat is made to function well in the weather.

The American straw hat making industry traces its origins to Betsy Metcalf.  Betsy may not have made the first straw hat in America, but in 1798, at age twelve, she made a straw bonnett hat is believed to be the first documented straw hat made in the USA.  Her next move immortalized her.  She then “learned all who wished to make bonnets”, thus launching an industry.  I’ve seen pictures of these early bonnets and the straw, neatly hand-sewn in rows, looks like “straw”-the stuff we see in bales found on farms.

Many straws are closely associated with a specific hat style.  Coburg straw is associated with Italian Skimmers (also known as Boaters or Sailor Straws-think barbershop quartet).  I don’t know which plant species Coburg straw comes from, but hats made from this material predate synthetics, so I am quite confident it is a natural straw layered in plies making the skimmer hard and durable.  Shantung, the straw we associate with better western hats, has a history similar to milan.  Its origins may be natural, but now it is a man-made material.  Although many people associate a “Panama Hat” with the fedora hat style, this material is made into virtually all men’s and women’s hat styles.  The optimo style – where there is a crease running laterally on the top of the crown – likely evolved from the natural crease created when a soft, unblocked, good quality Panama hat is rolled for storage or portability.  Sinamay, the product of a process of preparing the acaba plant from The Philippines (see above) that includes weaving the straw on a loom has become a material of choice for women’s straw hats.  In fact, it is the most popular millinery material in the hat-loving UK.

Many years ago, I traded for a hat made by the Cofans from the Agua Rico River of the upper Amazon in eastern Ecuador.  This crown’s impressive feature is the green iridescent beetle casings that ring the headpiece.  The casings are affixed to a sewn plant material from the area.  Amazonia, First Nation Americans, remote regions of The Steppes, tribes throughout Africa, East Asia, India, etc. all have hat making traditions.  Simply documenting whatever has survived into the 21st Century would be enough to justify a scholarly project.  However, why did some cultures elevate this craft to art and others simply whipped off functional apparel?  Is there a clue to other elements of cultural development and values that can be gleaned by this study?  How did human cultivation of plants for hat making change an area’s botany?  Were hats used for trade or were they considered useless outside of one’s indigenous region (in part because hats were so closely connected with one’s rank in the society, or religion, etc.)?  Good questions could make a long list.

I’ve read that historians believe hats were the first apparel worn by humans.  These hats of course were made from plants or animals.  Where’s the book on this extraordinary subject?  Much of the material is still out there. 
 
Enjoy your hats,
 
Fred Belinsky

www.villagehatshop.com

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

Felt is a mass of wool and/or fur. It is not woven, but rather pressed and manipulated in a centuries-old process using heat, water, and pressure to create the strongest, smoothest, most water-resistant natural fabric known. Legends abound with regard to its origin. Some claim that St. Clement (the patron saint of felt hat makers) discovered felt when, as a wandering monk, he filled his sandals with flax fibers to protect his feet. The moisture and pressure from pounding feet compressed the fibers into crude, though comfortable felt. Others suggest that Native Americans or ancient Egyptians discovered felt by way of fur lined moccasins or camel hair falling into sandals. In fact,, none of these “firsts” is first as scraps of felt have survived since the Neolithic era, 9,000 years ago, making it the oldest form on cloth. [One theory postulates that felt was "discovered" many times and in many parts of the world because its popularity has risen when societies have become poor, cold, and agrarian. As each society became more urban and advanced, felt making subsided or disappeared.]

To the hat industry, whoever invented felt is not as important as the fact that felt hats function well. Hats made of felt are durable, comfortable, and attractive. Felting has evolved to an art in hat making. Each manufacturer closely guards his exact felt making process and formula. I’ve come to understand over the years that what constitutes a good felt hat can be a matter of opinion or taste. For example, the stiff and meaty felt associated with a high quality American western hat is much different than the supple and light fine felt material associated with European hat making. (Think Stetson versus Borsalino.) Both felts require quality pelts and skilled craftsmanship, but with much different objectives.

Not only do the materials (wool, hare, beaver, nutria, etc.) used to make felt vary, but a host of considerations inform the outcome. Some hats are made to be protective and therefore the felt is stiff and heavy. The bowler, in fact, was made for a game warden in 1850 who wanted protection while chasing poachers on horseback. Cowboy hats function similarly . On the other hand, dress hats-which do keep one’s head warm or dry-are typically lighter weight and, in great part, expressions of style and taste. The finish of the felt, as distinct from its materials, can be “silk”, or “angora”, or “beaver” (not necessarily meaning that the hat contains beaver fur), or “velour”, or “suede”, or “sponge”, or “scratch”. Each finish has its own expression and associations. For example, the silk or angora finishes are typically associated with aristocrats and the top hat or homburg style.

Know that the felt hat that you are wearing or about to purchase is extremely labor intensive and is a modern day example of an ancient and venerable craft.

Fred Belinsky

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

www.villagehatshop.com

Our buyer Bruce went out and saw the Christys’ factory outside of Oxford.  While he was there he sat down with the Christys’ team and came up with a few styles that can now be found right here at Village Hats.  The Christys’ Fur Felt Iconoclast Fedora (this is the hat modelled after the Indiana Jones style), the Christys’ Bogart Fedora (a classic c-crown or teardrop top), the Christys’ Gangster Fedora (a brushed finish gives this pinch crown fedora a very unique look)and the Christys’ Pinch Sinatra Trilby (a short brim, perhaps not what Christys’ is known for, but it turned out so good we had to get it) are now all available for order. 

We couldn’t be happier with the way these styles turned out and we hope that you feel the same.  Take a look at our full range of Christys’ hats or check out the new styles simply by clicking on the photo or the name of the hat you are interested in.  If these are as big of a hit as we think they will be, you can bet there will be some future collaboration between Christys’ and Village Hats in the future.

The Village Hats team

www.hatsandcaps.co.uk

www.villagehatshop.com

Take a look at our top hats, Wholesale top hats, and wholesale hats: 

As you can see from these pictures, you don’t have to be in the hat business to buy from us.   

EU site: http://www.hatsandcaps.co.uk/

US site: http://www.villagehatshop.com/

This is a very old fulling machine, but it still works. (Remember, our European factory where the Jaxon Beret is manufactured is 149-years old.) A fulling machine is synonymous with a felting machine. This is the method by which the wool is condensed.

We still use the wood moulds, in combination with new machines.

 In this part of the process a mould is placed in the beret. This is done one by one before putting them in a huge oven to give them the shape they have.

The oven.

The berets all stacked together will soon have a sewn leather band and lining.

Shearing machine.

Here berets are checked one by one. Any non-woven thread is taken out.

After inspection the finished berets are boxed and shipped to us here in Wembley, then to your doorstep.

There you have it, an classic style made with the finest materials and traditional machines.  Interested in buying?  Take a look at the Jaxon Basque Beret, or take a look at all of our berets, or our wholesale berets.