Long Oval?

[epic610]

of all my hats, the ones that fit the best are marked inside with a tag that says "long oval". not sure exactly what that means.

looking at various hat stores on the net, do not see any options for ordering a "long oval" variation. how does one go about finding hats sized like this?

 

[scotrace]

It's Like This

Unless you're buying a vintage hat, I think you can only buy a true long oval fedora fom a customer hatter. They'll sometimes send a customer a device that measures exact head shape.
If you try to put fig. a hat on a fig. b head, it'll stretch and press at the front and back and create biggish gaps over the ears between hat and head.

Some off the rack hats seem to be a bit more oval-shaped than others, but it's hit-and-miss.

Hope this helps?

S

 

[Art Fawcett]

Scotrace has the shape right Epic, but a true custom hatter will always try to get your head shape so that the hat can be made specifically to your head, not to a general size. That's one of the major differences in "off the rack" and "custom". I don't know specifically of any major brand that offers Long oval's as standard stock, but then I don't shop or study the current brand hats so I could easily be wrong. I AM sure that your local store that carries major brands can order LO's but that would be a decision of the retailer. And by the way..you have more company than you may know. I've never done a study on it, but I sure get me share of hard to fit long ovals or extra long ovals.

 

[John in Covina]

Loss of Choice

Art is right, I haven't seen it as an option for any off the rack hat.

To get one these days you must go custom.

Would it be posible to get a hat stretched a little to accomodate the oval situation?

As we can see from the vintage hats that come up on E-bay, these size and shape parameters were available, although not as popular as the rugular size and shape.

Here we see an example of the contraction of the demand has eliminated choice on the part of the manufacturers. A similar thing happened in Fountain Pens. (There he goes with those darn pens again.) The nib, which is the writing portion of the pen was readily available in a wider variety of shapes and styles for different writing situations. These days many pens come only in FINE and/or MEDIUM. As the value of a pen goes up, the choices tend to increase, adding BROAD and Italic styles in the most expensive of pens.

The loss of choice has already occured in many industries and sevices, it will continue for a long time I fear as a formula of the accountants.

SO the corolation is that the most precise fit for shape & size outside the average points to the greater expense of custom work as the manufacturers of the rack goods no longer consider it viable.

However, you get what you pay for, and the greater expense simply leads to a superior quality hat and made only for you.

 

[besdor]

I dont think any of the manufacturers today make any dress hats in long oval , just regular oval . For my store , it has become a major problem as a good percentage of my customers are long ovals . We even have a few wide ovals as well . I'd love to have a good supply of long oval hats from Stetson or Borsalino but they wont invest in the blocks and flanges .:cool2:

 

[LEUII]

My favourite cowboy hat is a Stetson 7 5/8 Long Oval in Chocolate. I see long oval cowboy hats fairly often by them. If they do it in cowboy hats why not in dress hats? I turned my OR into a long oval myself .