To: Colleagues in the Hat Business To the people of the Andes, a hat never has been just a hat. Presently (late 2006), there is an exhibition at the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art in Santiago entitled "Chile’s Desert Hats" that intends to show, through a collection on Andean hats, the myriad ways humans create symbolic objects for social purposes. As well, Samuel Beckett and Rene Magritte understood that the bowler was not just a hat. The same is true for the topper as depicted by Edgar Degas or Dr. Seuss. Che Guevara and Pablo Picasso wore berets, in great measure, to send a message. The objects that we in the headwear industry make and sell have had remarkable power for as long as there have been humans. In our, often obsessive, preoccupation with our businesses and our, often rat-in-a-race, scramble to make a living, I thought I’d step back and consider the literal object of our work. After all, these objects will, both particularly and generally speaking, outlast us all. So, prior to the means of our livelihoods, prior to the race to discover the next hot style, prior to the pushing and shoving for the customer’s attention - and all the rest of it - what precisely are we doing? And, who cares? What we do is make and sell hats. And Mr. Chen cares. Today I received a letter (addressed to "The President") from Harry Chen of Gilbert Arizona. Even before opening it, this letter suggested, "slow down". Our business address was typed on an old typewriter, not very well aligned. Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlow could have easily found the murderer by tracing him to this pound-the-key-one-at-a-time relic from the pre-computer days. The look of the letter inside, before reading a word of it, was the same, but more: white out, red underlines made with a ruler and ink pen, periods punching the paper through to the other side - a missive from the past. But it was dated "16 November 2006". No, this was not a long lost letter that reemerged from the bowels of the US postal service, but rather a formal request with detailed specifications - 1 through 7 - from a man, who today, very much wanted a very particular hat. Five family photographs of Mr. Chen in his hat were also enclosed along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope for "return of the five pictures back to me at your early convenience".
The almost always-hurried businessman in me thought, "Are you kidding me? I don’t have time for this":
1. The white straw hat size should be 6 7/8 inches or 7 inches.
2. The hat brim width must not exceed 1 ½ inches.
3. The hat brim must be flat all the way without any upward curling at all.
4. The surface of the both sides of the hat’s oblong dome must be smoothly flat without any indent.
5. On the top of the hat’s dome there should be a line of narrow but shallow dent.
6. The height of the hat dome should not exceed 5 ½ inches.
7. A black band (made of satin or cotton fabric) surrounding the bottom edge of the hat dome must be 1 ½ inches to 2 inches wide.
[Underlines (in red ink), grammar and punctuation as you see it, white-outs (which you cannot see) is all the work of Mr. Chen.]
But before I could toss this letter aside and attend to the more compelling money-making matters of my business, I looked at the images: Mr. Chen, in a suit and snappy fedora, with sons or grandsons at Versailles; Mr. Chen in necktie and shirtsleeves, suit jacket in hand, wearing his natty white fedora in front of the Parthenon in Athens; Mr. Chen, with son (I assume) in his suit and straw fedora at The Vatican; Mr. Chen, many years later - with son in university graduation cap and gown with arm around his dad - wearing a new suit, but with same fedora (now with a three-pleat satin trim rather than the old grosgrain ribbon). To Mr. Chen and his family, this hat is not just a hat. This hat IS Mr. Chen. This hat symbolizes the full, well-lived, and long life of a man, happy times, surely a consequential and complicated father/husband/citizen (the return address sticker included an American flag) who loved that hat - and more. I suspect that when Mr. Chen is gone and his family creates a small shrine to the family patriarch, this white straw hat will be at the center.
So, hatter colleagues, the next time work gets aggravating and you find yourself shaking your head and asking, "What’s the object?" - remember Mr. Chen. The object is a hat. And what is our objective, if not to help Mr. Chen find another.
Fred Belinsky
The Village Hat Shop
