I wore a hat identical to their "old sport" in a nice brownish grey tweed through most of my college years. It was vintage and I picked it up in Memphis on Beale street for around $2.
I seem to have lost it, though. :cry: Sure was comfy!!
Baron hat's sells to the movie memerobilia crowd, and he charges what the market will bear. I've never thought of any of his hats as wearing hats. It's the kind of thing that folks with a serious collecting hobby buy and keep under glass. For much less you could get a linen Gatsby cap from B!Wear ($37 shipped) or Hatpeople (around $45 shipped).
The guy claims to have lived and studied with the natives in Monte Cristo, Ecuador. His story was changed a bit...it seems that Monte Cristo used to be a mountain city. The Montecristi I know is about 20 minutes from the Pacific Ocean and has one hill.
Funny, the photo is from Cuenca, Azogues, or Canar and there isn't a Monte Cristo hat making village in Ecuador. You'd think one would know the name of the place, especially if one studied the art there for so long.
I have both as well and they're slightly different in style. The B!Wear has a longer and stiffer bill from front to back, and comes with a snap on the brim. This means the material on the cap is pulled forward and leads to a very "collegiate" or "old sport" kind of look. The Hatpeople hats come with a shorter, wider and floppier bill and no snap, which lets the material do whatever you want it to. They also let you choose from 4 different cuts, of which I chose the "full cut" which gives you some more fabric on the front and sides. This leads to a floppier more "newsboy" working-class man kind of look. They're both excellent caps, the B!wear comes with a suede sweatband, the Hatpeople with a grosgrain sweatband. the B!Wear is fitted to S,M,L, or XL, while the Hatpeople one goes by head size in inches, and then has a neat elastic band set up running under the sweatband that you can tighten with a tiny brass safety pin in the back to fine tune the size. If you decide to order from Brett (B!Wear) I strongly recommend you ask him to send some of your top choice fabric swatches first. The pics on his site give you a good general idea, but without close-ups of the material it's hard to pic which one you want! The Hatpeople have small close-ups of the material when you click on the hat in question, right above their description. Maybe I'll try to get some pics up when I have a bit more time.
I have several B!Wear caps and they are very good hats, not costly at all.
If you wanted something fancy, like the cashmere in some of the Baron hats Gatsbys, you could pick your own fabric and send it to Brett and he can make a cap for you.
I would love to get a cashmere black. Maybe I will go fabric hunting....
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