Creamy as silk and costlier than gold, a Montecristi superfino Panama hat is as much a work of art as it is of fashion.
I once had the chance to visit a fine men hat shop and realized that the one-size-fits-all hats that I had seen elsewhere were pale imitations of the real thing. This photo journalism by Roff Smith from the New York Times let’s you appreciate the how fine the fibers are and how skilled the artisans. It is a visual treat.
Men’s hats got tinier and tinier brims in the 1960s in the US which made them look sillier and sillier, and the cultural shift against formality which was part of the Youth Quake dictated hats hats superfluous for both men and women. Which is too bad as a nice summer hat will shade you and look beautiful at the same time. Their sheer practicality is why you can still wear a Panama despite our current popular dress code being decidedly anti-hat.
