Check out the awesome hats of Pancho Villa article...

[Caz]

...in True West mag's online gallery.

Note the number of broad-brimmed hats that have the crown at full height and punched in what looks like a 4 to a half doz. or so small indents around to top.

Also noteworthy are Aussie-style campaign hats worn in one pic. Unfortunately, that pic in only in the magazine.

http://www.truewestmagazine.com/photo/slideshow/?id=75

 

[dhermann1]

Senor Villa also has his own contribution to make to the knee high boots for men thread. Neat pictures.

 

[RBH]

I woukld like to hera what Portolan might add about Villa, Phil knows his stuff!!!

 

[jimmy the lid]

I woukld like to hera what Portolan might add about Villa, Phil knows his stuff!!!

Yup -- right up Phil's alley...

Cheers,
JtL

 

[portolan]

Great Pics

Those are all fairly early pictures of Villa in and near Juarez,Chihuahua and El Paso. Villa was partial to Stetsons. He once put in an order for 300 Stetsons for the Dorados, his personal bodyguard/cavalry. U.S. General Hugh Scott said that the Dorados were the finest cavalry unit in North America at the time. Villa was rarely photographed without a hat on. He varied from traditional large sombreros (today worth quite a bit), to flat brimmed westerns. Most of the pictures of him in sombreros were posed. There are at least two photos of him from the Aultman collection showing him in military caps. He rarely wore a uniform in actual battle. His real life photos show him wearing rather sloppy westerns. He had a rather large head which was by the way, cut off some two years after his death. Recent scholarship leads to answers regarding his birth father....apparently an Austrian Jewish hacendado who owned the hacienda where Villa's mother worked. Ferman was apparently his birth name. He grew up as Doroteo Arango, became famous as Villa, but apparently was half Jewish and named Ferman. His battles with Obregon at Celaya were the largest military battles in North America since Gettysburg!