Charlie Huang
Practically Family
- Messages
- 612
- Location
- Birmingham, UK
Some of you here may have known about my recent top hat adventures. I bought an old pre-1918 Truefitt silk topper for around £205.
Unfortunately when it turned up, it had dents in it:
I then decided to enquire at Lock's and Patey's about restoring it. Both said it requires reblocking.
Lock's quoted me £200 whilst Patey's quoted me £90+VAT. I went with Patey's of course.
It took just under 4 weeks and when I recieved it, all the dents were gone:
The strange thing is, they also replaced the perfectly good original sweatband with a new one which I thought odd. They told me that because the hat was re-shaped to conform to my head, the old sweat no longer fitted or something like that. Anyways, I wished they told me beforehand (maybe I should have made myself clear that I wanted everything else intact at the beginning) but it's done. I might be able to do something about it at a later date.
Here was the original sweatband:
Here is the new one:
I also bought one of their 'bomb-proof' top hat cases:
Unfortunately when it turned up, it had dents in it:
I then decided to enquire at Lock's and Patey's about restoring it. Both said it requires reblocking.
Lock's quoted me £200 whilst Patey's quoted me £90+VAT. I went with Patey's of course.
It took just under 4 weeks and when I recieved it, all the dents were gone:
The strange thing is, they also replaced the perfectly good original sweatband with a new one which I thought odd. They told me that because the hat was re-shaped to conform to my head, the old sweat no longer fitted or something like that. Anyways, I wished they told me beforehand (maybe I should have made myself clear that I wanted everything else intact at the beginning) but it's done. I might be able to do something about it at a later date.
Here was the original sweatband:
Here is the new one:
I also bought one of their 'bomb-proof' top hat cases:
