New hat routine

Searched the stickies and the important threads and perhaps I missed it, so please direct me if I did.

In "Woman of the Year," Spencer Tracy does this little folding and shaping routine with his new hat, apparently to get the brim to break in just the right place or at just the right angle. Perhaps its a procedure well known to men of the age, handed down from father to son like the first shaving instructional, and now lost to history and changes in fashion. Or just film fluff with no great meaning.

Either way, as I've just paid the most for a hat that I've ever paid (in this crowd I'll call it an Oldsmobile in the range from Cadillac to Chevy), I'd be interested to hear about the new-hat shaping rituals of the experts here gathered.

I don't have a ritual but, then again, I can't put a bash into a hat nearly as well as many of the guys here.

Having said that, a couple of things determine how easily you can change the shape of your hat - whether we're talking about the brim or the crown.

First, there's stiffener. Your hat almost certainly has some amount of stiffener in it. The more stiffener, the more work you're going to have to put into shaping. You'll need steam from a tea kettle (or some other way that won't involve you burning yourself) and a lot of patience as you mold your hat by hand. Unless you're willing to wash your hat using the white gas method that some guys here have the guts to use, you don't get rid of stiffener, you just keep working the hat.

Next is felt quality. The better the felt, the more pliable the hat (subject to the amount of stiffener it might be holding; The best felt, when filled with stiffener, is still going to be tough to shape.).

Finally, there's blocking. If your hat is a new production hat, it's been blocked and stiffened to hold its shape. This is the combination of 1 and 2, but the shaping wasn't just done over a tea kettle, it was done by a machine that was made to permanently press that shape into your hat.

Take your time. I've been at it for quite a while and can't touch most of the work done by the guys here. It is satisfying, though, to know that the shape of your hat is your own.

Welcome to the Lounge and good luck.

StraightEight said:

In "Woman of the Year," Spencer Tracy does this little folding and shaping routine with his new hat, apparently to get the brim to break in just the right place or at just the right angle. Perhaps its a procedure well known to men of the age, handed down from father to son like the first shaving instructional, and now lost to history and changes in fashion. Or just film fluff with no great meaning.

Click to expand...

Spencer Tracy had his own idiosyncratic method for styling his hats. I have an article from the Fifties that beautifully describes this, but I can't figure out which box it is in at the moment (still unpacking from the move). The article is about the exclusive Cavanagh Hats shop on Park Avenue in NYC, and the various rich and famous that shopped there.

This is just a paraphrase, otherwise I'd quote it:

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn went into the shop to purchase a new hat for him. After picking out a hat that he liked, Tracy promptly dropped it to the floor, where he stomped on it, then proceeded to beat the snot out of it before placing it on his head. The salemen were utterly horrified at this behavior, but Hepburn explained it to them: "I want Spencer to look like a bum -- an expensive bum, but still a bum."

The story also relates he did a similar thing after having the Cavanagh shop clean and reblock one of his hats that became extremely soiled on a film set. Once Tracy was finished with it, it didn't look a whole lot different than from when he brought it in to be cleaned.

He may have had an extreme ritual, but I'm sure he wasn't alone in it.

Brad

That reminds me of the not so great movie Zoolander, in which a fashion designer started a line called Derelict (pronounced dare-a-leekt), where all of the models looked like homeless. I'm sure Tracy had more class.

I remember reading a similar story about Sid Vicious. Someone gave him a brand new leather jacket and he threw it on the ground, stomped on it, etc., saying he didn't want anything "beautiful or new." Of course, that was a big part of the punk ethos, I guess.

It's also nice to get that first dent in something that you're too careful with - even though that first dent is often depressing.
I wore my new Allen Edmonds to a wedding and all over Chicago, to break them in and get just a light scuff or two. I'll still do my best to polish away the scuffs, but when something is less than perfect, it doesn't need babying anymore.