Vintage vs. Late Model

[Thunderbolt]

I don't know if Late Model is the right set of words as this is more for cars, but I need to know the difference between Vintage and New hats. I have been attracted to late model hats because they are easy to find, brand new and complete. I'd be interested in vintage but they seem to be harder to find, my size, my taste of color, and the fact that they are used. Isn't it gross? A sweaty oily old hat? I know I will indeed get a lesson from The Fedora Lounge. Do you replace all the interior parts? How are vintage better than newer hats? I have owned a few wool felt crushable felt hats which all shrank after the rain, a Bailey Fur Lite which is a crushable 10% fur 90% wool fedora called the "Baker". Four years ago I got my first fur felt fedora. It's a Indiana Miller originally with an open crown. It too shrank in the rain but had it blocked and streatched at western wear stores nearby. I find felt frustrating because they keep shrinking when wet, but they are seen in the rain in countless movies, new and old. I expected mine to do the same, but they are basicly ruined when they get wet until they get blocked again. Washington is a tough place to keep a hat dry. Is this where vintage comes in? Does vintage have tolorance to shrinkage after getting wet? A friend of mine wears fur felt western hats made by Stetson and Resistol and they handle getting wet pretty good. They don't shrink hardly at all. I was almost tempted to buy a western hat and convert it to a fedora. I'm pretty new here. I am ignorant and stupid. Please someone educate me about vintage hats!!

 

[besdor]

dont get me started again with the vintage vs new thing again!!!
vintage hats are better of corse like anything else ,but new can be good as well especialy if you buy a better hat like a borsalino

 

[fedoralover]

Oh boy, now you went and got it started again. Besdor, please go to a hat shop and look at the new borsalino's. I did just last week. They wanted $245. for it. And seriously, it looked terrible. Glued in liner, even in the 100% beaver they are selling for $435. Poor stitching, cheap leather on the sweatband and worst of all the felt. Very porous, not pounced fine at all. I was wearing my vintage borsalino and did a side by side comparison and the sales clerk said " well obviously the older ones were much better" he was visibly embarrassed by how the new one looked. Others here have noticed the same thing.

I don't know where up north you are from, but if you are near Seattle, go to Bernie Utz's hat shop on Union Street and take a look for yourself.

regards fedoralover

 

[photobyalan]

Washington is a tough place to keep a hat dry. Is this where vintage comes in?

This is where an umbrella comes in.

The main advantage of buying a vintage hat is in what you will get for your money. You can get the same quality felt and workmanship in a new hat, but you will need to go to a custom hatter and it's going to cost you big money. You can usually pick up a vintage hat of excellent quality for less than a new hat of very cheap quality would cost. Add a cleaning and reblocking and you're still probably looking at less than what a new, bottom of the line Stetson costs.

As far as buying a used hat is concerned, it doesn't bother me at all. If the interior of the hat is soiled, I get it cleaned and have the sweatband and liner replaced if needed. Even with all that, it's still way cheaper than a custom hat. The thing that would steer me away from a vintage hat would be if the felt were damaged or if it were badly stained. Those kinds of problems are more difficult to deal with.

 

[Prairie Shade]

You may be new here at the Lounge, but that does not mean you are stupid or ignorant about hats. Thats my old job. The members comments above are pretty much true as I see it. To my personal taste there is something unpleasant(?) about wearing used items of clothing. But, if the hat is right, well, I have bought several so called vintage hats. If a seller is honest, you purchase something that says unworn, you shouldnt have much trouble with sweat stains, oil, etc. I'm unsure of exactly what is a vintage but a hat from the 30-50's should fill the bill. I have purchased a number of newer Stetson Fedora's and have noticed the same thing you have. If you are patient, and have a hat size that is not TOO large, you can surely find a decent lid Ebay for under 75.00. If not, others here have cut down cowboy hats and made fedoras from them. Should be an interesting experiment that I am anxious to try myself. For me, when its raining outside, I plop on one of my new Stetsons and hope for the best. I still cant leave an antique out in the rain.

 

[Dr. Shocker]

I understand your delema.....I pretty much wear only black with a ting of grey, white and the occasional color so I only look for black hats......I own or have owned both new and used hats and for me its a matter of taste.....if you have a problem like I do finding hats in your size and color prefrence then new might be the only route initially.......as you become more versed in hats you may choose to go with somthing more vintage.....I perfer vintage but finding my size and color has become a challenge and when I do $$$ seems to become a problem so I make do with what I can afford and find at the same time........

 

[Thunderbolt]

I don't know where up north you are from, but if you are near Seattle, go to Bernie Utz's hat shop on Union Street and take a look for yourself.

regards fedoralover

I'm in Olympia and I went to see the Berni Utz place to get my Indiana Miller blocked. It was shrunken and beat up. The lady took it out of the box and asked me what was wrong with it. Then she just held it over some steam and took the pinch out of it so it was like a homburg. She told me the pinch would put a hole in it. I left and didn't look back. Besides, all the hats were ugly. My Indiana Miller was a way better hat than all the others in that shop. If a new hat has to be custom in order for it to be of the same quality as a vintage maybe my Miller applies because it says "custom crafted by Builtmore" in the liner. Though it keeps shrinking when it gets wet, it's always like new after a blocking.

 

[Prairie Shade]

I have a question

OK OK vintage felt guys. I thought part of the felt making process was to heat the hairs at some stage in order to shrink them together and form a tight felt. If thats the case, how many times will the damn stuff shrink when wet. Older hats tend to repel water better than the newer "coffee filter" hats but did they also shrink if soaked? The water tends to "bead" on the older hats better because of the finish I assumed. Is it the density of the felt alone? I'm still learning along with Thunderbolt. Afterthought: I like the coffee filter description, sometimes accurate tho not always.

Sincerely,

Just Another Hat Wearer (Since 1950's)

 

[fedoralover]

Well thats a question that will probably have a lot of different answers from different folks own experiences. However a lot depends on what the hat is made of and the quality of the felting process to begin with. A lot of variables there. But as far as vintage felt shrinking now when wet, mine haven't. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate why.

All hat bodies start out as cones and when a hatter shapes them over a block it will straighten it out to the degree that the block dictates. On new felt bodies, if you get it really soaked it will have a tendency to revert back to it's original shape and it will taper. Now here's my "theory" on why vintage ones don't, they have sat around for 40 to 50 years in their present shape in someone's closet. During all that time, decades, they eventually loose their memory of a cone shape and the shape they sat in for the last 40 to 50 years becomes fixed. Hence when they get wet they don't revert or shrink back to a cone shape again.

I have no proof of that, but to me it just seems to make sense that after decades and decades, the felt will take on the shape it's been left in. I don't know how else to explain it. The best felt made today will still shrink or taper in the crown if it's soaked enough. I'm sure that even vintage felt will shrink up to some degree if subjected to enough abuse. Nothing is indestructable and that goes for felt, even though it is the toughest material you can make.

I'm sure others have their theories too, this is just mine and by no means do I think it's absolute.

regards fedoralover

 

[jamespowers]

Vintage felt does not shrink because it was made not to shrink. The processes that the hatters but their bodies through in the vintage age made the hat a veritable "soft stone." You could shape it however you like and it was soft enough to take the block but it was also dense enough to take the rain.
Some call the old process preblocking and the like. We also have to remember that hats from that era were treated to be water repellant. Stetson called their "aquanized." Mallorys were "Cravenetted." Swanns used the Water off a ducks back routine. Whatever you call it they were treated. Combined with a dense felt, that makes them water proof for hours.
Believe me. I have tested an old Dobbs that may have looked like it was on its last legs but it still repelled water for over four hours of continuous rain! The only place it started to get was the center dent. That was because water had sat there for hours though. It still kept my head dry though. Even better was the fact that when it dried it looked even better than it did before getting soaked! Some of the moth divots were less noticeable. No shrinkage or tapering. It was the same hat but refreshed a bit. I love that old tan hat. I doubt I will ever let it go no matter what it looks like.
So when you see those old movies with a guy standing out in the rain with a hat on, he really did and the hat held up. It dried out and didn't taper as long as he didn't sit it in some awkward position where it would dry with the brim up like Mugg Mcginnis.

Regards to all,

J

 

[Not-Bogart13]

Honestly, I'm surprised that nobody on the forum has brought up hat stretchers yet. I'm one of the people here who knows almost nothing about hats (but learning), but didn't a few here say that drying a hat on a hat stretcher will help prevent shrinkage?

 

[Mr. Rover]

The hat stretcher is solely used to keep a soaked leather sweatband from shrinking. It may keep the felt around it from shrinking inward as well, but when people talk of shrinking hats, I think it happens in the crown as well. The only way to prevent shrinkage in NEW hats is to dry it resting on the crown in a cool place out of direct sunlight. Renderking Fisk gave me a big theory on how gravity works with the hat when it is resting this way. Nowadays, I use a coat/hat rack and hang my hats to dry.
Anyway, if you find that your hat has soaked through to the leather sweatband, or you've been sweating into it, you can use the hat stretcher to maintain that size in the sweatband, but that's really only the first 1 3/4" of the crown.
Thunderbolt, I've only been here a while, but it sounds like you've had bad experiences with hats. I'd like to start off by stating a Commandment in hat-buying: "THOU SHALT AVOID WOOL FELT". Trust me- once you get a vintage FUR felt hat, you won't go back to the stiff wool felt. And leather sweatbands on old hats are great, so long as they're still supple. If you feel like its oily, wipe it off with a wet paper towel. I doubt you'll have a problem with that, though.
If your worried about oily liners, you can get that switched out in a jiffy, or even just handwash the vintage one.
The Indiana Miller is a decent hat, but it has one tragic flaw: It is powder dyed. That means that they powder on the finish and color. That mean that it will bleed in rain. With vintage hats up until the late 60s and 70's, the fur felt was dyed and will never bleed. I've read about other's experiences with the Miller and having brown water running down their faces from the dye. I DON'T ADVOCATE WEARING THE MILLER IN THE RAIN. If you want a good Indiana Jones style hat, get an Akubra Federation or an Adventurebilt.
Vintage, Akubra, and Adventurebilts are probably the best price/quality ratio you're going to get today!

Ray


ray

 

[Thunderbolt]

Bleeding Miller

I never had a problem with my Indiana Miller bleeding its color. I got Mine when the Indiana Miller had been on the market for maybe two years so they may have fixed that problem. My Indiana Miller tends to soak up water like a sponge, but it has never soaked through. I should probably get some of that Scout water repelent for felt hats. After getting my Indiana Miller, I havn't even given wool felt the time of day. I have a hat jack too, I think that's what you were talking about. Its got the wood blocks etc. It is a very good thing to have. If the hat is pinching, the hat jack can really streatch it out, but be carefull not to distort the shape of the hat by over streatching. It does nothing for the tapering of the crown unfortunatly, and that's where we run into trouble. The wierd thing about my hat is that it only shrinks once. Get it wet, it shrinks. Get it wet again, it stays the same.

 

[besdor]

New hats will shrink much faster because of the type of fur used . Beaver fur is more dense and older hats were made using more beaver fur . Rabbit fur which is used today wont hold up as long as the hairs are not as dense .The bodies are aslo being stetched out more today . As certain famous Italian hat manufacturer is having a lot of problems with this .
One of the only companies that I;ve seen that did not have shrinking problems with is Akubra . They seem to use a heavier body that holds up well to wear .

 

[Prairie Shade]

BESDOR Very good post, thanks. You may be on to something!!

 

[BellyTank]

I believe that older hats which are 'hand made'- those which have been blocked in a traditional manner and been pounced many times on the block (would have spent more time on the block)and then possibly reblocked (taken off the block, re-wet and then back to the block)retain their shape better. But then the mass produced vintage hats seem to hold up pretty well to shrinkage and tapering. A lighter vintage felt, or one that has been pounced thin, may actually shrink less, irrespective of fur content... maybe.

B
T

 

[jamespowers]

As certain famous Italian hat manufacturer is having a lot of problems with this .
One of the only companies that I;ve seen that did not have shrinking problems with is Akubra . They seem to use a heavier body that holds up well to wear .

That is interesting considering Akubra makes their hats from wild hare fur. That is sort of like rabbit but hare has some better properties due to the wild environment and the effects it has on tightening the fur coats on the hares.
Bodies could be of lighter weight and that would make a difference in the production value of the finished product. The lighter weight bodies do not allow for much pouncing or shaving of the felt to get the felt nice and even and tight. As my father used to say: "what you start with makes a difference in what you end with."

Regards to all,

J

 

[Prairie Shade]

Famous Pepto Akubra

Well, I started with a fawn Snowy River which was a gift from my wife about 15 years ago and thru repeated exposure to the elements (sun-rain) I can assure you that wild hare WILL shrink. I wore my Akubra Federation this am along with my yellow rain coat hoping to duplicate the experiment and ruin my new hat. It stopped raining.

 

[jamespowers]

Well, I started with a fawn Snowy River which was a gift from my wife about 15 years ago and thru repeated exposure to the elements (sun-rain) I can assure you that wild hare WILL shrink. I wore my Akubra Federation this am along with my yellow rain coat hoping to duplicate the experiment and ruin my new hat. It stopped raining.

That is always the way it is when you want to experiment with nature. I have seen Akubras shrink and taper pretty bad as well but I have never owned one so I really cannot comment from personal experience. I suppose they are a "good deal" to some but they never fully convinced me to try one. Maybe that auction site will persuade me to buy a really cheap one and check it out.

Regards to all,

J

 

[Thunderbolt]

in a nut shell

based on all the posts, beaver content seems to be the key. Have plenty of beaver or all beaver and we should be ok. Why isn't beaver more widely used? Are they endangered? I thought they were a pest, daming up streams and causing floods. I guess there's plenty of rabbits in the world though huh? Don't they have a rabbit problem in Australia?