Panama Hat articles from the web

[HungaryTom]

Hi all,

I am starting this thread since Fedora Lounge is a great forum for information.

I post here links of some cool articles on Panama hats I found browsing the internet so they can reach their target audience, namely hat aficionados here at FL.

This is a chronological listing.

Panama hats: made in Ecuador, undercut by China
By Christian Oliver
http://www.boston.com/news/world/lat...rcut_by_china/

The last straw
By Hal Weitzman
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c0c336fe-a18...0779e2340.html

Keep your hat on!
Georgina Guedes
http://www.news24.com/News24/Columni...020828,00.html


Primo Panama Hats, a Dying Art in Ecuador
by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4683911


Since these articles are available from the public domain I hope this will not hurt any copyrights.
If yes please delete the entire thread.

The articles are "neutral" so not inserted from this or the other sellers home-page.

If there is no problem with copyrights I invite all, to post similar links so we can learn more.

Regards:

Hungary Tom

[RBH]

thanks!

[RedPop4]

Thank you, Tom.

[Panamabob]

About 18,000 of some of the finest Panama hats in the world are piled in a locked, caged-off corner of the storeroom at the Homero Ortega factory in Cuenca, Ecuador, a picturesque colonial town in the province of Azuay in the southern Ecuadorean highlands, 2,350 metres above sea level.

It is true, I've been in it.

In Montecristi, Brent Black, a US retailer who sells the hats for up to $25,000, is working to get more money directly to the weavers and so keep the tradition alive.

That is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Perhaps it is coming true. I do hope so.

[HungaryTom]

And here is another :

Where the hatters go mad if you mention Panama

June 10, 2005
From James Hider in Montecristi

The arrival of occasional tour buses in the sleepy town of Montecristi sends a ripple of activity through the Ecuadorean heat haze: young men pretend to iron Panama hats on wooden blocks, women set out half-finished fedoras as though interrupted while weaving.

The Panama hat — dandyish trademark of the man from Del Monte, the American writer Tom Wolfe and an institution at Glorious Goodwood — has always suffered an identity crisis.
Connoisseurs know that it has been made for centuries in Ecuador, despite the popular name, derived from the fact that it was exported through Panama and enjoyed its heyday shielding builders of the canal from the tropical heat.
In the back streets, away from the air-conditioned buses ferrying curious American pensioners, Rosendo Delgado puts the finishing touches to silky-smooth hats the colour of vanilla ice-cream. At 80, with rheumy eyes and swollen knuckles, he is one of the last master craftsmen in town, and for 60 years has painstakingly pleated brims of hats that can cost more than $10,000 (£5,500) in the United States.
Making a real Panama “superfino” takes three months and involves up to six people. A good hat should be so tightly woven that it can hold water, and can be folded up for easy storage without losing its shape. Señor Delgado charges between $30 and $500 for the finished product.
But the time and effort, and the poor pay, have driven many in Montecristi into other businesses, and Señor Delgado — who weaves with his wife and brother-in-law in a tiny workshop — worries for the future.
“People don’t weave as much. They work in fishing and shrimp factories. There are fewer families dedicating themselves to this. Before, in my father’s time, everyone lived off this,” he said.
The fifth-generation hat-maker has come to terms with Panama’s capitalising on Ecuador’s most famous product, but it still rankles. “They have misnamed it the Panama, but Panama has never woven hats. They are made only here in Montecristi,” he grumbled.
While Señor Delgado has completed the brims of untold thousands of hats, he buys the unfinished products from the true master weavers in Pile, a village lost in the lush hills that rise above the barren Pacific coast an hour to the south.
No tourists visit Pile, where pigs and chickens root among ramshackle houses and the master weavers ply their trade, uncredited and poorly paid. Here, the art is far from dying, merely because there is no alternative to the traditional handicraft.
Manuel Alarcón has been cutting toquilla palms and weaving hats for 59 years, since he was ten. For reasons that no one can remember, the people of Pile make the body of the hat but never finish the brim. Señor Alarcón and his four sons weave beautiful hats with frayed edges that are finished and then trimmed by razor by the men of Montecristi, but they never earn more than $200 a month.
Señor Alarcón has never questioned the ancient status quo. “It’s our custom to give it to the people of Montecristi, and they are the ones that make money. They ask the people of Montecristi for them, not us. Look, they say this is a Panama hat. It’s not. It’s not even from Montecristi. The really fine ones are from the countryside, and not just anywhere, but here.”
But competition from foreign hatmakers and the fishing industry has taken its toll. In Montecristi, no one actually wears a Panama: all the men sport American-style baseball caps. Señor Delgado’s wife, Victoria, said: “No one uses the hats here. Only my father. He was the only one. They wear baseball caps now. If someone puts a hat on, they make fun of them,” she said.

[cookie]

Thanks I thoroughly enjoyed that - having already watched the video on their manufacture in Strandhatters in Sydney.

[Panamabob]

So, how do the weavers start making money?

Is it to charge so much for a hat that you can afford to give 5% back to the community?

Is it to sell the hats at a reasonable rate as to sell hundreds or thousands more a year than normal, therefore giving a reason for weaving?

Anyone, anyone?

[HungaryTom]

So, how do the weavers start making money?

Is it to charge so much for a hat that you can afford to give 5% back to the community?

Is it to sell the hats at a reasonable rate as to sell hundreds or thousands more a year than normal, therefore giving a reason for weaving?

Anyone, anyone?

Fifty-fifty.

• Only this ancient and accepted business model can save the art of high-end Montecristi from dying out.
• 50-50% is the only partnership at whatever pricing level, BTW it was the custom between artist and retailer for centuries.
• What master-weavers in Pile produce is namely art. What is done in Cuenca is industry. The only thing both hats are named Panama hats.The fact that each Cuenca hat industrial (Ortega, Dorfzaun, Serrano) collects Montecristi finos shows this clear distinction. They never collect their own hats they just make a living from that.
• Weavers know exactly that they weave the hat for many months and all the other steps in the finishing take few weeks. They know that their art is sought after, since all kinds of strangers (Incas, Conquistadores, Creole, Gringos, etc.) have pilgrimed to their shacks since centuries from all corners of the world for reasons.
• In the 50-50% model the retailer calculates his sale price in a way that his part covers his expenses, costs, taxes and living. The artist accepts that his partner must travel, finish, block and dress the hat, maintain an exclusive shop, advertise the product etc. and all this costs him money.
• Once the hat is sold, getting back the money to the partner in Pile is very easy: there are banks and WesternUnion! Or the partner must indicate the sales price and put the 50% in cash in the weaver’s hand when he returns for commissioning the next time. The wheel must not be re-invented.
• Substituting the 50% with bargain prices plus some donations is unfair. It is cynical. Destroys goodwill.
• Exclusive contract is OK. But without 50-50% it is also unfair. It reads like “As Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs” and destroys goodwill. That’s why this model is in the phase of “re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic”
• Getting 50% from up-market prices of 10-25-30k for a hat would pay a decent life for the masters. And it would inspire talented young guns to continue, they surely would NOT want to leave their homes for shrimp factories or “to make some real money” as illegal immigrants somewhere in the US or Spain.
• It’s 50-50% why weavers accepted Don Rosendo: they saw him spending his active life driving his car on dirt roads re-collecting their hats and working his tiresome hat-finishing trade. They all knew that he added another fifty percent to their price. This is how he rightfully earned his house(s).
• Weavers only wish themselves the same amenities. …Live and let live!
• The problem is that nowadays weavers know exactly from the outside world, unlike in the glory days of Panama; their emigrated relatives report first hand. They all see that decades of excellence in weaving ended up with a bamboo house for 63 yrs old Cenovio Espinal, one of the best - mentioned by name in the Panama hat book and an article...PanamaBob posted at FL pictures on the housings of the famous others: Simon Espinal and Manuel Alarcon…This misery is only possible in the tropics, the first winter would kill them in those “romantic” housings…
• Just try to walk in their shoes. They see they have nothing to loose. It is only them who live in shacks from the long chain of people interested in the Montecristi finos! Manabi natives don’t wear Montecristi hats any more
• Weavers have plenty of time to think about their situation while weaving. I believe that this activity is differentiating the brain cortex more than watching TV, playing PS2, browsing the web. The result of their work is the proof. It is true that they have not visited college. But they are not fools, trained monkeys nor bio-robots.
• They are handling their misery with dark humor. It is the lack of 50-50% why they grin and joke once learning about partner’s sales prices and re-send similar partners. In their jungles they see mosquitos, leeches, vampire bats feeding on blood. Maybe they draw some parallels…
• Once the last weaver stopped weaving for the above reasons, their “clever partners” from all around the world can go into the jungles of Manabi and begin weaving those extra hats themselves. They can finish and sell them at whatever price they want. There’s enough toquilla in the selva and everything is documented in photos and videos...The stock of a few thousand hat bodies worldwide will quickly run out in the days of global warming and cheap credit.
• And once this happens even the sorcery of the best master hatter will never turn out a Superfino de Montecristi from unblocked sterling beaver, Milan wheat straw or Cuenca brisa bodies…
• No biggie at all, there will be always enough baseball caps, paper hats and Cheap Cuencas labelled as Fino Fino Finissimo to shade the heads in summertime.

[Panamabob]

50-50% . I knew I should have charged more!

[cookie]

Like the paprika in your Hungarian food your articles have spiced up the discussion of one of my favourite interests....toquillas and put some interesting international economic aspects to the endless talk of the dying trade.