K.D. Lightner
Call Me a Cab
- Messages
- 2,354
- Location
- Des Moines, IA
OK. I have a comment on vintage fur hats and it is not a comparative between hatters. For the record, I do have a lovely blue fedora from GH and did post photos of it in an earlier thread. It is softer than my old Borsalino, which is plenty soft and thin.
Something happened that I wanted to throw out to you fellows and see what your feelings are on this. My vintage Borsalino was a bit dowdy, someone had worn it at one time and it had a tattered brim ribbon, the wind strap was dangling and the hat needed cleaning. I took it and the Dobbs 15 hat (the one that had been styled to look like an LBJ hat) to the Hat Works store here and they cleaned the Borsalino, put in new ribbons, brim and hat band and, alas, took off the wind strap as it was stretched and battered.
The hat looks fine, but here is what I felt when I got it home: It felt like the old hat was violated. That new stuff on the body of the hat made me feel like I had somehow damaged the hat. (The Dobbs 15 looks fine, by the way, and I will send some photos).
I recall once, back in the 70's, I visited a friend who had purchased a New Hampshire farm from an elderly couple who could no longer work the farm. The barn was 180 years old, the house even older, dating back to the American Revolution. It did not have electricity or modern plumbing. We had to chop wood for heat, heat water on wood-burning stoves to take a bath, light candles or hurricane lamps for light at night, and keep perishables on ice (no problem in the wintertime).
During my visit, my friend got the house wired for electicity. For the first time in all of its 200-year existence, the house had lights. My friend celebrated that night because it meant lights and refrigerators and soon they would get flushing indoor toilets and water from a fawcet not a pump over the sink, and heat. It was the beginning of modernization -- but we all sat there and felt blue. Finally, another visitor said it: "the house has been violated, she said, by the modern world."
That is how I felt about the hat today. Am I nuts or what? Maybe I should just leave vintage things alone, like they say you should do on Antique Roadhouse. Or.....
What have your experiences been when you have had those vintage fur felt hats that needed a little work and you have had the work done?
karol
Something happened that I wanted to throw out to you fellows and see what your feelings are on this. My vintage Borsalino was a bit dowdy, someone had worn it at one time and it had a tattered brim ribbon, the wind strap was dangling and the hat needed cleaning. I took it and the Dobbs 15 hat (the one that had been styled to look like an LBJ hat) to the Hat Works store here and they cleaned the Borsalino, put in new ribbons, brim and hat band and, alas, took off the wind strap as it was stretched and battered.
The hat looks fine, but here is what I felt when I got it home: It felt like the old hat was violated. That new stuff on the body of the hat made me feel like I had somehow damaged the hat. (The Dobbs 15 looks fine, by the way, and I will send some photos).
I recall once, back in the 70's, I visited a friend who had purchased a New Hampshire farm from an elderly couple who could no longer work the farm. The barn was 180 years old, the house even older, dating back to the American Revolution. It did not have electricity or modern plumbing. We had to chop wood for heat, heat water on wood-burning stoves to take a bath, light candles or hurricane lamps for light at night, and keep perishables on ice (no problem in the wintertime).
During my visit, my friend got the house wired for electicity. For the first time in all of its 200-year existence, the house had lights. My friend celebrated that night because it meant lights and refrigerators and soon they would get flushing indoor toilets and water from a fawcet not a pump over the sink, and heat. It was the beginning of modernization -- but we all sat there and felt blue. Finally, another visitor said it: "the house has been violated, she said, by the modern world."
That is how I felt about the hat today. Am I nuts or what? Maybe I should just leave vintage things alone, like they say you should do on Antique Roadhouse. Or.....
What have your experiences been when you have had those vintage fur felt hats that needed a little work and you have had the work done?
karol