Panama Hat Thread

The Shoe said:

@Tukwila @tropicalbob @Boomerang and anyone else who has been following my episodes with panamahatmall.com...
Some progress!
I got an email from panamahatmall.com today (almost 2 weeks after canceling and asking for a prompt confirmation) saying they Would give me my refund. That is literally all it said. Here’s the entire email:

Dear Gary
We will proceed to made the full refund
Regards

Daniela

I wonder if the credit card company got hold of them to let them know that they were likely to be facing a chargeback (I read somewhere that the merchants get fined for chargebacks and if it happens too often, they get blacklisted).

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Er - congrats. I guess?

Guardian Enzo said:

Er - congrats. I guess?

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Here's hoping!

The Mikado...

@Tukwila @tropicalbob @Boomerang @Guardian Enzo
Good news! I got my money back. It went in yesterday and showed up in my account today.
True to form, no sign of the requested email confirmation that the transaction had been made!
Thank you all for your concern.

Good for you, as I know how something like this can eat at you. After just looking at the news a few moments ago, it's nice to see something good happen for someone. Congrats!

Relying on the count of montecristi weaves as the standard of quality is a bit like judging a violin by its strings. Each hand woven Panama goes through a lot of fine tuning to play its music... the weaver's skill harmonizing with a hatter's blocking. A lot of opportunities for wrong notes. A fine montecristi is truly a thing of beauty. It is also quite heavy and dense - perhaps not the most comfortable choice for a hot, humid day. Here is one sold under the Cavanagh brand, 11 vueltas, nicely woven and handsomely finished as you would expect from this premier brand. A happy solstice to all my hat friends!

Hello, from my side I can say that they closed the post office in Ecuador,
It wasn't a company that provided good service either, but these last three years were chaotic.
Correos del Ecuador damaged me a couple of packages so I stopped using it as my main shipping company, the main advantage was the prices.
Panamahatmall or Sombreros Gamboa or whatever, is the most popular company of Panama hats in the world. The problem is the use of the Ecuadorian postal service.

Panamahatmall is not an Ecuadorian company, its owners are Bolivian, the Prieto brothers, are pioneers in e-commerce in Latin America, they have several handicraft businesses, in Ecuador they have one more business. In fact the company is registered in the USA, the payment gateway works in the United States.
Were called Gamboa hats, the artisans says that was the name of the person who sold them the business. In Ecuador they are almost a ghost company because nobody knows them, they only sell internationally

A few months ago I wanted to do business with the people who make his raft boxes, but now raft production has stopped, in the future I would like to offer them, of course with some of my own designs.

JC Montecristi Hat said:

Hello, from my side I can say that they closed the post office in Ecuador,
It wasn't a company that provided good service either, but these last three years were chaotic.
Correos del Ecuador damaged me a couple of packages so I stopped using it as my main shipping company, the main advantage was the prices.
Panamahatmall or Sombreros Gamboa or whatever, is the most popular company of Panama hats in the world. The problem is the use of the Ecuadorian postal service.

Panamahatmall is not an Ecuadorian company, its owners are Bolivian, the Prieto brothers, are pioneers in e-commerce in Latin America, they have several handicraft businesses, in Ecuador they have one more business. In fact the company is registered in the USA, the payment gateway works in the United States.
Were called Gamboa hats, the artisans says that was the name of the person who sold them the business. In Ecuador they are almost a ghost company because nobody knows them, they only sell internationally

A few months ago I wanted to do business with the people who make his raft boxes, but now raft production has stopped, in the future I would like to offer them, of course with some of my own designs.

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I’m aware that there were problems with the post office. I made it clear to them that I wasn’t upset about the delay in that I knew we lived in difficult times. I would’ve been happy to wait longer - even to still be waiting if I had been kept aware of what was happening. What I couldn’t accept was their incredibly poor communication. I had to tell them that the post office wasn’t working between the countries. Despite that they still told me not to worry and that the hats were on the way. From start to finish all communication was initiated by me. What messages did come, often contained mistakes.
I’m also convinced that the credit card company got hold of them and told them that if they didn’t refund that I would be taking proceedings further. I can’t think of any other way to explain the timing of a message I got the saying that I would be receiving a refund. They had been silent for ages from the time I asked for a refund until just after I got hold of the credit card company. Even after that, I asked him to proceed with the refund as quickly as possible and then to let me know by email when the proceedings have been completed. It took over a week for the refund to process and no email was forthcoming.

I understand what happened to you must be a a very bad experience.
I've read complaints from them but in Italian, French or Portuguese, it all boils down to communication problems and not getting your order. But these are all old complaints, they're not recent things. Many assume that it is because the customer service is in another country, so they are not aware of what is happening in their bases in Ecuador. This is just speculation, for Ecuadorians it is a mystery, we only know that it is located in a building in Quito, of course the few we know of its existence.

Most important is a good weave
No matter if it is from Pile or from any other place in Montecristi, when a hat is well woven it is well woven.

There is a myth that every Pile hat is good, but it all depends on the weaver, there are weavers from other communities with the level of a good Pile weaver. Even the payment can ensure that the weaver makes his maximum effort, there are also weavers that are irregular in their quality, one day they weave a great hat and other times the hat has too many faults. Trial and error is important to know who you are ordering from, there are weavers who can only do business once the weaving is done.

The most exclusive within the panama hats is not the 60 grade hat, the hats with letters is the most difficult to get, there is only one person in all Ecuador that makes them, at least in quality we all want. It is difficult to get an order from her, she is always busy. The only way is to go and hope that she does not have any order. There is no way to communicate with her, you can only visit her, in her area there is no internet, nor phone signal. Only once I could make an order, she left a picture, she is also the head of Calados de Montecristi, they are a group of 7 weavers, they are difficult to get this kind of hats, most of them are from Cuenca, but of course they only make Calados Finos.

Maybe one day I will have my own designs of Calados, I leave a picture of a design of the Manteña culture that I ordered some time ago.

I never could get the name of the weaver of this one.

Korean War era Knox Premier Quality baku straw. A very light and airy hat weighing in at 1.9 ounces. Baku straw was sourced from the Philippines.

alanfgag said:

Korean War era Knox Premier Quality baku straw. A very light and airy hat weighing in at 1.9 ounces. Baku straw was sourced from the Philippines.

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Impressive Baku. Super nice!

Please help! I’m looking for my first Summer hat and was looking to learn about Panamas. I have a couple Akubras and one Stetson felt hats that I wear regularly but Georgia summers are too hot for those! Is there anywhere to get a minimally-tapered Fedora-style Panama reasonably priced (under $100)? Should I limit my search to other types of straw hats? Any help appreciated!

dawgvet said:

Please help! I’m looking for my first Summer hat and was looking to learn about Panamas. I have a couple Akubras and one Stetson felt hats that I wear regularly but Georgia summers are too hot for those! Is there anywhere to get a minimally-tapered Fedora-style Panama reasonably priced (under $100)? Should I limit my search to other types of straw hats? Any help appreciated!

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I’m no Panama hat expert, but my experience has been that the blocking is the biggest problem. At your price you’re looking at something that was blocked for the masses and for my taste will have too much taper and the crown will be too short.

deadlyhandsome said:

I’m no Panama hat expert, but my experience has been that the blocking is the biggest problem. At your price you’re looking at something that was blocked for the masses and for my taste will have too much taper and the crown will be too short.

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Even buying a Panama that a US based custom hatter blocks it is hard to get them without a bit of taper and the shorter crown. My only Panama that is blocked fairly straight sided is my optimo styled Panama. Nice decently high crown with minimal taper. I bought it online for about $150 delivered to Canada maybe 5 years ago. But all my other tear drop bashes have taper and the shorter crown even my latest enroute from Northwest Hats..

dawgvet said:

Please help! I’m looking for my first Summer hat and was looking to learn about Panamas. I have a couple Akubras and one Stetson felt hats that I wear regularly but Georgia summers are too hot for those! Is there anywhere to get a minimally-tapered Fedora-style Panama reasonably priced (under $100)? Should I limit my search to other types of straw hats? Any help appreciated!

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I have never done any business with this regional distributor. I met with one of their suppliers in Cuenca in 2018/2019 over the Christmas holiday.

If you look at their pics on instagram, you can see their traditional blocking, but also some fairly straight-blocked tear drop hats. You might contact them and see what they can do for you.

For under $100 you can get a nice hat, but it probably won't have a leather sweatband. I have both leather and fabric sweats and I can't make my mind up on which I like better for a straw hat.

https://www.instagram.com/ilovepanamahats/

From my point of view there are several aspects that contribute to the blocked having these defects.
Firstly, it could be the aluminium block and the pressure of the press, they are not originally designed to block straw, the pressure needed for the straw cannot be optimally regulated. Although some argue that blocking in this way is perfect. This being the case, the handmade blocked should not have that problem.
The abuse of measures the straw body, when the hatter asks me about a straw body, does not care about the size of the block where it was woven. Maybe because he thinks that this does not matter. But the ideal is that the body is woven according to the size of the hat that is going to be, you can stretch it 1-2 cm in hats that are not Finos, it can be useful because the straw is unpredictable. But for fine hats it is better to work with the right size, if you want a 58 cm hat look for a 58 cm body.
But the reality is different, they only want a body, the size doesn't matter, here or in another country, they stretch the body according to they need it, stretching the straw a lot is not good, it can leave the straw very thin and deform the crown in some way.
Because that happens, the weavers work the sizes that are most sold but there are artisans who go to stretch the body, it is faster to weave a body of 55cm than one of 58cm, anyway the artisan will stretch it.
Now the hat wants a size 60 cm, several things can happen here:
1- The hatter buys a bell in 58 cm, great, but it was woven in size 55 cm, in summary you are stretching the body 5 cm to reach the size 60 cm
2- The hat asks for a body, they sell you a size 55 cm, he stretch it by 5 cm.

The short crown is a standard, 10-11cm, so almost all hats are woven. As I mentioned in another post, most of the higher crowns are the product of a body with a 10cm crown and a 10cm brim. It's not the nicest way to do it but if the ribbon covers it nobody will see it at first sight, although I don't like this way, I don't consider it correct, the change of weave must be at the end of the crown, not be part of it.

With $100? maybe if you can afford a little more than $110-130 you could get a grade 13-14 Montecristi. Well, if you want to get into the world of the Montecristis, I can make you an offer in those grades according to your budget, if you are interested we could talk.