Sombrero Side Trip

So at some point near the beginning of this trip I became a hat man. I think it was a combination of trying out a crushable hat for backpacking, most indigenous people here wearing them, and reading Tom Miller’s Panama Hat Trail. The final reference is most pertinent to this story.

Panama Hats are made in Ecuador. It’s sort of a long story and Mr. Miller tells is better than I ever could. The short version is that the hats got their name because they were exported to the world through ports in Panama. Here they are called Sombreros de Paja Toquilla, though they label many of them as Panama Hats for the tourists. Not surprisingly, the hats are made of toquilla straw. The straw is grown and on the coast then shipped inland for weaving.

The hats come in a wide variety of quality, measured by the number of stitches per inch. The lower quality hats don’t carry a special designation. The first one I bought cost around eight dollars and has eight stitches per inch. Cuenca is known for mass producing these hats for the export market. They look good for the first few weeks but then easily loose their shape and break when rolled. The higher quality hats are called finos and super finos. The best of which hold their shape after the tightest of rolls, feel like silk, and will actually hold water. They are truly an artistic creation and the art originated in a town called Monticristi. There the climate is more humid which makes the straw more flexible and easier to weave. Since I’m now apparently a hat man, and we are in Ecuador, I decided I should have a fino.

We had been in Monticristi once while working for ESPOIR, but we literally had five dollars in spending money that day. Understandably, they didn’t go for it. I had looked around that day and found a shop and owner that I really liked. Their family owned the store and weaved the hats themselves. When I got off the bus from Canoa, I headed straight there.

The owners were out front as they had been before, weaving hats. I said hello and was happy to find that the head weaver remembered me. We started looking at hats, and I had to keep asking if there were any better, and there always were. After being preoccupied with these hats since our first couple weeks here, I had a pretty good eye for the weave and quality. We narrowed my selection down to two hats. One was shaped in the style I wanted and the other was among the best quality in his shop. After traveling the four hours from Canoa and knowing that this was my only chance, I didn’t want to settle. I told the proprietor, Modesto, that it seemed that I would regrettably have to buy my hat at another shop. At this he offered a solution. He had a hat which he believed would suit me at his house and if I waited ten minutes he would return with it. I agreed to look at it but said that I was going to visit the other shops while he ran to fetch it.

I visited three other shops, each with nearly identical results. I was able to quickly find a hat that I was happy with and then the salesperson would quote me a price of $200. While bargaining is expected here, a starting price like that was insurmountable for me.

I went back to Modesto’s shop with a bit of anxiety. He hadn’t returned yet so I waited. When he did return he had with him several unfinished hat bodies. Unfinished means that straw fringe still encircled the brim and that the hats had no shape. At this point I panicked a little. Modesto did have a hat of the quality that I wanted, but I told him that I didn’t have time to wait for the hat to be finished and that I couldn’t come back another day. He smiled and assured me that he could have it ready in thirty minutes. I was shocked. I realized later that even though my hat took nearly three weeks to weave, the finishing was relatively simple. I asked him how much it would be, cringing as I did expecting the worst. He said $60 and I agreed without hesitation, no bargaining necessary, I was getting a very good deal.

He lit a stove and then went to get some chairs and a table. I bought us all a bottle of Coke and then sat down to watch my hat being made before my eyes. It was a treat that I hadn’t dreamt of. He snipped off the fringe, measured my head size, asked if I wanted a liner (I declined), and put the hat on a block. Most of the work of finishing the hat was literally ironing it. The stove was used to heat a heavy old fashioned iron which they ran over the entirety of the hat with a lot of muscle power behind. After the ironing was done he formed the hat by hand. This was especially amazing because I knew that most hats today are shaped on mechanical presses. He cinched a band around it and placed it on my head. The hat was finish. It was, and still is, beautiful.

The best hats are typically made by older people that have had the experience weaving necessary to create these masterpieces. While my hat is truly wonderful, it feels more like smooth cotton than silk and I wouldn’t trust it to hold water for more than a few minutes. However, Modesto is only in his mid-twenties so I imagine him as becoming one of those great weavers of Sombreros de Paja Toquilla.



(BTW: for those counting at home my fino is twenty stitches per inch)