The BORSALINO BROTHERHOOD

[jeffgarf]

I just dug mine up and sure enough it's from that shop as well. Curious!

Snapped some pics but don't have time to post them, will do soon.

I wasn't crazy, right?

 

[steur]

I present another (one of the very few we see here) Borsalino Castor to add to the Brotherhood. This was sold as a black, size 6 7/8. Once I got the buyer down on his price, I was willing to buy it and work to resize it (or have it worked on). At purchase, I noticed the Punti size 5 tag, and though I'm usually a 5 1/2, this one ended up fitting perfectly.

A 2 1/2" brim with a thin hatband. It weighs 8 gr. Upon further inspection, I believe it is actually blue, an even darker shade than Mirtillo. As the last picture will show, the lining of the sweatband fused itself to the white celled tag, making almost everything but the size impossible to read. I attached an enhanced photo if anyone would like to assist.

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Really cool find , Jeff. As you said: these castoro hats don't show up often. Not all of them came from Giuseppe Gallieni though. Mine came from Michele Balbi. It does happen though that some hats seem to be exclusive. All Martora hats we've seen here come from Peluso and all the "Maior" hats with the cool liner come grom Giuseppe Marino. Retailers could choose their own liners (within reason I suppose).

I had a go at the label and for my money it is a Mirtillo. The model name keeps its secrets (to my eye at least).
The limited number of blue colours from Borsalino are a bit of an enigma. I'm sure when I first started with this hat thing I saw a colour chart by Borsalino somewhere with all of their blues and there were dozens of them with very subtle differences between them. Never been able to find that chart again