Recent content by Fedoraphile

Actually, I have one of PB's Diamante hats, and love it. Just wondering how much improvement on it I'd get for say $100. $100 isn't my limit, it's just a question of what I can get for $100. Perhaps I'll go for $200, perhaps not. It really isn't clear to me how much better the $200 hat will be...

Who makes the best Panama hat for $100? By best, I mean the one with the best weaves per inch count, good looks and customer service. Put another way, what's the best hat one can get for $100? Fedoraphile

Have you tried hatshapers? There's a website with "hatshapers" instead of wooden hat blocks. Have you ever tried these out? Any good? http://www.hatshapers.com

First, the hat, what with all that pigeon sh*t that's graced it and the dog slobber that's embedded it, and second, the dog, never know where its tongue is gonna end up. Any time I see a dog licking someone on the mouth, I just think, "Now what was that tongue licking a few minutes ago?"

And then send it in for a good cleaning....

Yeppers, tourist quality is a fair description of it. With the finer weave hats at the airport going for $60-70 but not looking all that much better than this one, it's easy to see why I sprung for it. One of these days, perhaps I'll go the route of a much nicer hat, from you, of course...

Picked it up for a cool $15 at the Quito, Ecuador airport. Looks better in person than in the pictures, and isn't as white as the top photo suggests. That pic was taken in direct sunlight (edit: not directly on the hat, as can be seen; the photo was worked a bit afterwards, in any case the...

That dropping probably has a good dose of ammonia in it, and that can act as a bleach. I'd try using a very gentle liquid hand soap such as Softsoap, with cool to warm water on it, after scraping it and getting as much of the dust out beforehand. One thing you didn't mention was the...

Unsure as to the provenance of this hat... Where, in your opinion, was it made? Please note the inscriptions on the sweatband. Thanks,

No, definitely not Montecristis. I do like them though. Thanks for your assistance. Fedoraphile th

Thank you for a very helpful post. I had suspected that some stiffener is probably used, and that's fine with me, as now I know it's totally normal. As for the point of diminishing returns to which you refer, in your opinion, where does that lie? I went over Brent Black's website a bit but...

I just did a quick weave count on the three hats. The straw colored one I got for $10 is pretty coarse, and comes in about 100; nice hat for mowing the lawn and so on, looks plenty good in any case. The other two come in around 130 to 150... Not bad at all for about $15. BTW, I didn't...

How deep are my pockets? Deep enough to buy any of the hats that I've seen advertised on the various websites. My question is not about money or how much a hat goes for. When I was in Quito, one of the stores had an extremely fine weave count Panama they asked $800 for, which they insisted I...

This past week I was in Ecuador, and had the chance to take a look as quite a few Panama hats. One of the things I noticed was that the higher weave count panamas were quite floppy, which is to be expected. I've seen some excellent panama hats on this forum that were blocked and look simply...

Prepare to cover your eyes, for my suggestion you may wish you hadn't read! I used some hair gel on an el cheapo Indiana Jones look alike to stiffen it. Just slathered it generously on the underside of the hat, including inside the crown. Let it dry, and then shaped it while steaming it over...