MattC
A-List Customer
- Messages
- 424
- Location
- San Francisco and New York City
I think every Borsalino has the company's slogan "Qualita Superiore" printed somewhere on the liner. I have a vintage brown Borsalino, which I think may be the best hat I own. It is amazingly pliable. You can shape into any style, from C-Crown to Center dent, change the pinch, the brim, using just your fingers. It just takes one touch. The hat will hold the new shape until you change it. Yet it is so soft and pliable it seems amazing that it holds any shape at all (with typical understatement, Graham Thompson told me it was "a very cool hat." ). This hat has a raw silk liner. But inside, faintly it says "Qualita Extra Superiore." The hat was bought in Italy (It has the Genoa sellers address on the sweat band). I think it dates from the early 50s.
I have three other vintage Borsalinos, which say "Qualita Extra Extra Superiore" on the liner. They are also amazingly easy to shape by hand, but the felt is stiffer. They were also bought in Italy (two in Milan, one in Rome). The liners on two of these hats are regular silk satin, on the other the material is porous clearly designed to breath more than silk in hot weather. All three have the kind of rough plastic over the center of the liner that companies used before shiny plastic liners.
Does anyone know what the "Extra Superiore" and "Extra Extra Superiore" mean? Is it like the famous "XXX" in American hats (just hype). I assume it refers to felt quality, but I don't know whether it was just a way to say "top of the line" at the moment, or whether it meant something in terms of the kind of felt used.
I have three other vintage Borsalinos, which say "Qualita Extra Extra Superiore" on the liner. They are also amazingly easy to shape by hand, but the felt is stiffer. They were also bought in Italy (two in Milan, one in Rome). The liners on two of these hats are regular silk satin, on the other the material is porous clearly designed to breath more than silk in hot weather. All three have the kind of rough plastic over the center of the liner that companies used before shiny plastic liners.
Does anyone know what the "Extra Superiore" and "Extra Extra Superiore" mean? Is it like the famous "XXX" in American hats (just hype). I assume it refers to felt quality, but I don't know whether it was just a way to say "top of the line" at the moment, or whether it meant something in terms of the kind of felt used.
