Women's Hats

The brim on a woman’s sun hat:

it decides how much of you stays in the shade. A wide-brim straw hat covers face, neck and shoulders for a day on the sand. A fedora, with its pinched crown and shorter brim, looks right in town. A bucket hat packs flat in a bag, and a cap or visor shades only the eyes, which is why they go out with women’s sportswear on a morning run. Most inexpensive straw hats are coated paper straw: light and cheap, but a soaking softens it and the brim never quite recovers. A pair of women’s sunglasses does the rest.

The sombrero pintao and the turns in its crown:

it is woven by hand in La Pintada, Penonomé and Antón in Coclé, and in Herrera, Los Santos and Veraguas by artisans who keep the same method. The pale braid is palm fibre, the dark bands are reed or palm fibre dyed dark with leaves, and a plant-fibre thread sews it all together over a wooden mould. Women wear it with traditional folk dress and to folk singing festivals. Quality is counted in the turns of braid around the crown: a work hat has about five thick ones, 15 is very good, and the finest reach 22 or more in much thinner braid. Two things keep the count honest. The brim normally carries a turn or two fewer than the crown, so the number quoted should come from the crown. And a large size has room for more turns than a small one of the same fineness, so compare hats of similar size.

Why the Panama hat comes from Ecuador:

the toquilla-straw hat took the name from the travellers and canal workers who wore it here, but it is woven in Ecuador, around Cuenca and Montecristi. It is one colour, with no dark bands, and graded by how fine and tight the weave is. Plenty of hats sold as “Panama” are paper straw in the same shape, and a seller who cannot say what the straw is should be pricing it as paper.

A month and a half of weaving in a fine pintao:

that is about how long a hat of more than 15 turns, with the decorative patterns worked in, takes to make, and such a hat does not go for less than about $450; the finest made-to-order pieces pass $1,000. Simple pintaos of under ten turns, the kind sold at stalls and craft shops, start around $50 to $130. A sound used pintao holds much of its value, because there is still no industrial way to make one. What pulls the price down is a sweat-stained crown, a braid peeling at the brim edge, or a size few heads fit.

Turning a used pintao upside down:

is the first thing to do with one. The braid is sewn inside out so the joins sit inside the crown, and each join marks the line between two turns, so counting them checks the number the seller claims, from the black turn to the final braid at the edge. Sweat collects in the crown and along the brim edge, which is where the braid starts to peel. On a toquilla Panama hat, look hard at the pinched front of the crown, where dry straw cracks first, and walk away from a crack that has already opened.

Listing a hat with the inside of the crown showing:

saves a pintao buyer a wasted trip. Photograph it in daylight from above, from the side and upside down, so the joins can be counted from the photos. Give the inside circumference in centimetres next to the size number, the number of turns and, if you know them, the artisan and the community it came from, since a known maker adds to the price. Clean a pintao with mild soap, dry it in the sun and keep it in a dry bag until it goes. Whoever comes to collect it will turn it over before anything else, so leave them time to count.