There have been a few posts about this recently, but I think the topic deserves its own thread, as I'm sure I'm not the only person in this position.
The basic question: suppose that you want to have a hat custom-made and custom-fitted. But suppose also that you are unable to go for a custom fitting because the hatter lives several thousand miles from you - he cannot therefore measure your head with a conformer and shape a formillion from that.
What's the best way to convey to him the precise shape and dimensions of your head? The idea is that he should be able to get as close as possible to making a hat that fits as well as it would have if he had been able to measure your head and fit the hat to it directly.
Clearly simply measuring the circumference is not enough. At the very least we need to know if the head is a long oval or round oval, and ideally we need to know the shape in three dimensions.
Some suggestions so far:
1) Photographs from a variety of angles, including the top of the head, photographed from directly above.
2) Measurements of head circumference combined with measurements of head diameter on both axes. (Not sure how one could measure the latter directly - I thought of a large vernier caliper, but the jaws on those things are usually too short to go all the way across the head. Obviously if you have at least one hat that fits you perfectly you can measure the diameter of that, but if you haven't, it's a problem.)
3) Follow the directions on this web page for making a "mold" of the head. (This link is intended for wig-making rather than hat-making, but the idea isn't too outrageous. There is a potential problem that the eventual mold would be a negative rather than a positive - the shape of your head is the space under the mold rather than the outer surface of the mold itself. Unless a positive model is made from the mold you can't sit the hat on top of it to see if it fits. Fitting the hat to the "template" on the outside would make it fractionally too large, and template would be very delicate. But perhaps it could be used to set up a formillion?)
4) Wrap lead plumbing tape around your head, then use that to draw an outline on paper, and post the paper. (An ingenious idea, but that, again, gives you only 2D information).
What's ideally needed is some way of making an actual life-size 3D model of the head, but I know of no cheap, easily postable way of doing this. If one had a friend who was the make-up person on a sci-fi TV show, he could take a plaster cast of your head and then make a life-size model of it in plaster or latex
but this would be tricky, expensive, and difficult to post!
There ought to be some way of at least shaping something to one's head that holds the shape long enough to be measured at home, and the numbers sent to the hatter - but how, and what measurements are useful?
Is there an electronic equivalent of a conformer that produces the relevant numbers in digital form? I know there are primitive 3D scanners that allow you to (say) put your own head on a character in a computer game - would these be accurate enough to be useful? There is also software that constructs a 3D computer model from a couple of scanned photographs - again, I've no idea if it's accurate enough to be useful. I dimly recall a tourist attraction in Covent Garden a while back that allowed you to make a 3D model of your own head in crystal, but I don't think it was life-size, and that sort of apparatus is unlikely to be cheap or portable.
Suggestions welcome.
The basic question: suppose that you want to have a hat custom-made and custom-fitted. But suppose also that you are unable to go for a custom fitting because the hatter lives several thousand miles from you - he cannot therefore measure your head with a conformer and shape a formillion from that.
What's the best way to convey to him the precise shape and dimensions of your head? The idea is that he should be able to get as close as possible to making a hat that fits as well as it would have if he had been able to measure your head and fit the hat to it directly.
Clearly simply measuring the circumference is not enough. At the very least we need to know if the head is a long oval or round oval, and ideally we need to know the shape in three dimensions.
Some suggestions so far:
1) Photographs from a variety of angles, including the top of the head, photographed from directly above.
2) Measurements of head circumference combined with measurements of head diameter on both axes. (Not sure how one could measure the latter directly - I thought of a large vernier caliper, but the jaws on those things are usually too short to go all the way across the head. Obviously if you have at least one hat that fits you perfectly you can measure the diameter of that, but if you haven't, it's a problem.)
3) Follow the directions on this web page for making a "mold" of the head. (This link is intended for wig-making rather than hat-making, but the idea isn't too outrageous. There is a potential problem that the eventual mold would be a negative rather than a positive - the shape of your head is the space under the mold rather than the outer surface of the mold itself. Unless a positive model is made from the mold you can't sit the hat on top of it to see if it fits. Fitting the hat to the "template" on the outside would make it fractionally too large, and template would be very delicate. But perhaps it could be used to set up a formillion?)
4) Wrap lead plumbing tape around your head, then use that to draw an outline on paper, and post the paper. (An ingenious idea, but that, again, gives you only 2D information).
What's ideally needed is some way of making an actual life-size 3D model of the head, but I know of no cheap, easily postable way of doing this. If one had a friend who was the make-up person on a sci-fi TV show, he could take a plaster cast of your head and then make a life-size model of it in plaster or latex
but this would be tricky, expensive, and difficult to post!There ought to be some way of at least shaping something to one's head that holds the shape long enough to be measured at home, and the numbers sent to the hatter - but how, and what measurements are useful?
Is there an electronic equivalent of a conformer that produces the relevant numbers in digital form? I know there are primitive 3D scanners that allow you to (say) put your own head on a character in a computer game - would these be accurate enough to be useful? There is also software that constructs a 3D computer model from a couple of scanned photographs - again, I've no idea if it's accurate enough to be useful. I dimly recall a tourist attraction in Covent Garden a while back that allowed you to make a 3D model of your own head in crystal, but I don't think it was life-size, and that sort of apparatus is unlikely to be cheap or portable.
Suggestions welcome.
