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Rosie Boylan, Damian Damjanovski, and Robert Carroll trying on hats at Strand Hatters in Sydney

It’s not enough to like a hat, the hat has to like you, too. There’s more to consider than hat size and shape, as you can hear in this podcast when headwear specialist Rosie Boylan and hat shop manager Robert Carroll work with model Damian Damjanovski to find the right hat. They consider Damian’s headshape, face, weight, colouring, personality, clothing preferences, age, and where he wants to wear the hat.

The podcast shows clearly the benefits of shopping somewhere that specialises in hats and can advise you.

Thanks to all at Strand Hatters in Sydney for their hospitality, expertise and willingness to let us use their stock for this podcast.

Juana Atkins from Cadlow Trading rocks a bedazzled beret

It’s easy to think that hat sellers are a dying breed because hats are like that thing in the supermarket you don’t notice they sell till you’re looking for it. I came across Cadlow, an online clothing store from New Zealand, through owner Juana Atkins’ Twittering about fedoras.

I asked her how she came to sell hats in her online store. She said she hadn’t thought much about hats or selling them till her eye was caught by “a couple of unusual ones” at a gift fair. Knowing that her teenaged son loved hats, she put in a small order, thinking perhaps that if he did, others would.

Now she has a limited but popular range in which black wool felt fedoras are the hot sellers. The range is growing, with the addition of two fedoras imported from America, one houndstooth and the other a black corduroy. She says trilbies don’t sell as well, unless the have a really good pattern.

New Zealand merino wool cheesecutter (flat cap)

Although the hot sellers are imported, there are Kiwi-made hats in the collection, too: New Zealand merino wool cheesecutters. They sell well but Juana wouldn’t have sourced if a customer hadn’t asked for them, further showing how rewarding a good relationship with an attentive hat seller can be. I can only imagine they’re very warm and would buy one, myself, if I didn’t have a similar Kangol already.

Other customer requests have been for bigger sizes, leading Juana to conclude, “There must be a lot of Kiwi men with big heads because they sell week in and week out.”

The 61 cm fedora is the most popular, which tells me I should move to New Zealand as that’s my size and it’s large enough to be hard to find in some styles. Trying buying a vintage hat on eBay even close to 61 cm.

In terms of trends, Cadlow’s sales show the smaller brimmed (not stingy) fedora has the lead on the wider brim. Winter (it’s winter in this half of the globe) has been great for sales of wool felt fedoras.

One of Cadlow’s best features is its 14-day returns policy (refund or change size), something bound to appeal to first-time hat buyers not sure of their size, although the site includes advice on how to measure head size.

Almost all Cadlow’s sales are within New Zealand, proving they have great taste in the land of the long white cloud. And sales are increasing, particularly among 20-something men.

“Now that I sell hats I am always looking out for them,” says Juana. “NZ men are still pretty conservative. Colourwise for hats, black is number one followed by grey and quite a way behind grey is brown. Anything with colour on it seems to have a very limited market unless it is a really cool retro print in murky greens and browns and orange.

“I found a hat like that that sold out in weeks. I went to reorder only to find out that they had no more and wouldn’t be ordering in any more from overseas as they changed their patterns every year.”

For any hatmakers reading, Juana has a plea “Retro is big and anyone who can make a wool felt fedora with a really cool retro-patterned hat band will have me knocking on their door begging them to wholesale them to me.”

Anyone who, like me, suffers from a cold head should check out those cheesecutters.

You’ll find Cadlow Trading and Juana at www.cadlow.co.nz

City Hatters' window display

Arriving in Melbourne on a crisp and wintry June night, my first look at City Hatters was its illuminated olde worlde window display. It was easy to find: the shop was, as its slogan and website promised, under the clocks of Flinders Street train station, opposite Federation Square in the heart of the city. By night you can’t miss the aging neon sign flickering the words “City” and “Hatters” alternately then together.

As a lover of men’s hats you can only fall in love with that window display. Underneath old school gilt lettering advertising headwear for men, deerstalkers sit on wooden stands next to trilbies, newsboys, tweed bucket hats, antique hatboxs, and walking canes. Down the steps, you can see a pyramid of top hats ion display in the window by the door.

On this Friday night, City Hatters’ time-warped window display was incongruously innocent next to the vibrant flow of purple-haired goths, toughs in hoodies, and party girls falling out of the train station for a Friday night in the bars around Federation Square, down the Yarra River and beyond.

The charming window was far more promising than the City Hatters website, which I’d looked at the day before. Of the eight brands listed, the pages for six of them said apologetically, “There are no available products under this manufacturer.” So why list them for me to click on?

Part of the large selection at City Hatters

The next morning I found out just how little justice the website does this great little shop. City Hatters is piled floor to ceiling with straws, trilbies, pork pies, flat caps, the odd deerstalker, all kinds of Akubras, and even a bright red sombrero next to a handful tricorns.

But the thing that ensured I went back three times in our two day visit was the staff. Shortly after I walked in, I was asked if I would like any help then left alone when I said I was happy — very happy — browsing.

When I went back later, Christian, looking sharp and professional in a dark suit and black tie was engaging on the history of the shop. He didn’t need Tess to suggest twice that he pop on a tricorn for a picture when I asked to take some for the blog. Tess didn’t need to pick a hat for the picture: she was already wearing a carriage hat and outfit to match. Two staff for such a small shop suggests an emphasis on customer service. (There is also a bespoke hatter on staff.)

Tess and Christian

The quaint shop window framed in gilt letters, the lady in the carrage hat, and the cockney boy soprano on the sound system combined to make City Hatters an endearingly eccentric place to be on a cold morning and, if we’re honest, endearingly eccentric is surely how many hat aficionados would see themselves, which makes City Hatters a perfect place to shop.

City Hatters has been around — and in the same location — for 99 years. It has survived, as the website says, “depressions, recessions, good times, bad times, hat times and hatless times”. From what I’ve seen, there are another 99 years in the shop and I hope to be going back in many of them.

See the Open Crown Flickr pool for more pictures of City Hatters