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Simon Espinal has woven what is perhaps the finest Panama hat in haberdashery history. Roff Smith for NPR.<\/p><\/div>\n
Early one morning in June, a Panama hat weaver named Simon Espinal sat down\u00a0to work at a wooden table in his house in Pile, an obscure village hidden in\u00a0the hills near Montecristi, in Ecuador’s steamy coastal lowlands.<\/p>\n
Selecting eight threadlike strands of toquilla straw from a special stock of\u00a0extraordinarily fine straw he had spent three weeks preparing, he separated\u00a0them into four matched pairs with which he formed the cruzado\u2014 the crossed\u00a0threads \u2014 that is the start of every Panama hat.<\/p>\n
And then he began to weave.<\/p>\n
Over the coming days, then weeks, then finally months, the Panama hat he\u00a0began that morning spread and grew. The cruzado evolved into the plantilla,the\u00a0saucer-size crown of the hat, and then the copa, the sides of the hat, which\u00a0takes shape around a block of lightweight caco wood that serves as a mold.<\/p>\n
Summer segued into autumn; Christmas came and went, as the creamy white\u00a0fabric continued its spread slowly down the sides of the block, fractions of an\u00a0inch at a time, and then, after a complicated turn in the weaving, outward to\u00a0form the brim.<\/p>\n
Every day at the end of each weaving session, the work-in-progress was\u00a0carefully wrapped in clean muslin cloth to protect it from dust or spills.\u00a0Saturdays were spent sorting through the straw that will be used during the\u00a0coming week, examining each strand in a good light, matching them as closely as\u00a0possible for color, tone and slenderness. Finally, near the end of February, he\u00a0stopped. The hat was finished.<\/p>\n
Simon Espinal has woven many fine hats over the years. Now 47 years old,\u00a0he’s been weaving Panamas ever since he was a boy. He was taught by his father,\u00a0Senovio, who was regarded as one of the greatest hat weavers in Montecristi in\u00a0his time. The old men in the village, and the longtime hat dealers in\u00a0Montecristi, generally believe that the title has passed to Simon, although\u00a0Simon himself is far too modest to claim it.<\/p>\n
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When the shoots of the toquilla palm are broken open they reveal a mass of greenish fibers \u2014 the “straw” from which the hats are made. After they’ve been split into fine threads, the fibers are briefly boiled, then hung out to dry. Roff Smith for NPR.<\/p><\/div>\n
What he will state is that the hat he finished last year, and which required\u00a0nearly a thousand hours of weaving, is the finest he has ever woven \u2014indeed the\u00a0finest he has ever seen or even heard of: a creamy-white, silky-fine\u00a0masterpiece averaging an astounding 4,000 pin-neat herringbone weaves per\u00a0square inch; a weave so fine you’d need a jeweler’s loupe to count the rows.\u00a0And each of them done by hand, by fingers alone; no loom is used in the making\u00a0of a Panama hat.<\/p>\n
He is equally emphatic when he says he will never attempt to weave a finer\u00a0one. The strain on his eyes and the intense mental concentration was too much,\u00a0even for a weaver of his skill and experience. “When you are weaving such fine\u00a0straw, you cannot allow your mind to wander even for a second,” he said through\u00a0an interpreter. “When you weave, there is nothing in the world but weaving and\u00a0straw.”<\/p>\n
He kept a log of the hours he spent weaving this one masterpiece hat.It came\u00a0to just under a thousand, from the morning of June 19, 2013, when he began, to\u00a0the 20th of February last year when he finished.<\/p>\n
Espinal wove the hat at the behest of Hawaiian-based Panama hat dealer Brent\u00a0Black, whom he has known for many years and who agreed to pay him a salary\u00a0during his eight months of weaving, plus bonuses and the promise of a\u00a0commission \u2014 likely to reach five figures \u2014 when the hat is eventually\u00a0sold.<\/p>\n
The difficulty with selling this particular hat is figuring out how to price\u00a0it. One of Espinal’s lesser hats, with about 3,000 weaves per square inch, went\u00a0for $25,000, sold to a Hollywood figure who wanted something special to wear on\u00a0his tropical honeymoon.<\/p>\n
But this latest masterpiece is far more special. The degree of difficulty in\u00a0weaving a Panama hat jumps exponentially as the weave count rises. A hat with\u00a04,000 weaves per square inch is many, many times more difficult to weave than\u00a0one with 3,000, and thus is also many times rarer. In fact, in 30 years of\u00a0dealing in high-end Panama hats, Black had never before come across a hat with\u00a0more than 3,000 weaves per square inch \u2014 and those he’d seen that were near\u00a0that figure were all woven by Espinal.<\/p>\n
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Weaving is only the first step. From the weaver the hat passes through the hands of a series of artisans with Hemingway-esque titles: the rematador, the cortador, the apeleador and the planchador. Roff Smith for NPR.<\/p><\/div>\n
None of the old-time hat dealers in Montecristi, some of whose memories\u00a0stretched back to the 1940s, could remember seeing anything that fine\u00a0either.<\/p>\n
Nor are they ever likely to again, says Espinal, who believes his\u00a0masterpiece may well be the finest Panama hat ever woven. A modest, soft-spoken\u00a0and rather shy man, he doesn’t say this as a boast but as a simple home truth.\u00a0Aside from the fact that weavers who can weave straw that fine are extremely\u00a0rare \u2014 think of baseball players who can hit .400 over a season \u2014 there is the\u00a0practical matter of the time it takes to weave a hat like that and the chances\u00a0of something happening to it \u2014 a spilled drink or a bump or knock that tears\u00a0the fabric. No weaver, with a family to feed, could afford to take that risk,\u00a0he says, unless he was guaranteed payment regardless of how the hat turned\u00a0out.<\/p>\n
And nobody had ever done that before. Black made him the offer because he\u00a0was curious to know just how fine a hat it was possible for the world’s finest\u00a0weaver to weave. Espinal accepted because he was curious about that himself.\u00a0Now, having found out, he has no desire to repeat the performance. Once was\u00a0enough. This hat is it.<\/p>\n
“My hope is that it will go to a museum,” said Black. “This is not a hat\u00a0that should be on anybody’s head. This is the very pinnacle of an old and very\u00a0beautiful art.”<\/p>\n
A rather arcane art too, little understood by even the hat-wearing public.\u00a0For one thing, Panama hats are not made in Panama \u2014 and they never were. They\u00a0are made in Ecuador and always have been. Historically and traditionally, they\u00a0come from the villages around Montecristi, a town of 15,000 about 90 miles up\u00a0the coast from Guayaquil, although nowadays the overwhelming majority are made\u00a0cheaply in the big commercial center of Cuenca, high up in the\u00a0Andes.<\/p>\n
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Don Rosendo Delgado, now in his late 80s, is one of the great old-time hat\u00a0dealers. He says Simon Espinal’s hats are among the finest \u2014 if not the finest\u00a0\u2014 he’s ever seen, though he recalls a female weaver from the 1950s who might\u00a0have come close. Roff Smith for NPR.<\/p><\/div>\n
Montecristi, with its age-old hat-weaving traditions and tiny output,remains the spiritual home of the Panama hat. Locals have been weavingextraordinarily fine hats out of toquilla straw for hundreds of years. TheSpanish conquistadors even remarked on it when they passed through in the 16th\u00a0century \u2014 although of course the hats weren’t called Panamas back then.<\/p>\n
That curious misnomer didn’t come about until the early 19th century thanks\u00a0largely to Manuel Alfaro, a 39-year-old exiled Spanish military officer who\u00a0arrived in Ecuador in 1835 having fled Spain as a result of backing the wrong\u00a0side in the Carlista Wars.<\/p>\n
Adrift in the New World, he hit upon the idea of marketing the beautifully\u00a0woven straw hats made around Montecristi. The hats were popular among sailors\u00a0and travelers, but Alfaro had visions of scale. He organized the weavers and\u00a0set up straw plantations to secure his supply, then went into the export\u00a0business, shipping thousands of hats up north to the bustling seaports on the\u00a0Isthmus of Panama.<\/p>\n
Alfaro, Panama and the hats all hit the big time together in 1848, when the\u00a0California Gold Rush saw tens of thousands of get-rich-quick prospectors\u00a0swarming across the isthmus on their way to San Francisco and the gold\u00a0diggings. A great many bought the jaunty straw hats. Light, cool and stylish,\u00a0the hats provided shade against the tropical sun and yet could be rolled up and\u00a0tucked in your pocket. Since Panama was where one bought thesesplendid straw\u00a0toppers, guess what they came to be called?<\/p>\n
By the 1850s Alfaro was exporting more than a quarter of a million hats a\u00a0year and had become wealthy. Life got even sweeter after the Paris Exposition\u00a0in 1855. A Frenchman who had been living in Panama presented Napoleon III with\u00a0an extremely finely woven Panama hat. His Highness loved it. He wore it\u00a0everywhere. Panama hats not only became in vogue but stayed there, an enduring\u00a0gentleman’s spring and summer fashion, the finer the weave the\u00a0better.<\/p>\n
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Panama hat weaver Simon Espinal hikes into the jungle, in the canton of Montecristi, Ecuador, to collect shoots of the toquilla palm, which containthe straw used to weave the headgear. Roff Smith for NPR.<\/p><\/div>\n
Money was no object \u2014 not with the likes of J.P. Morgan, Edward VIII and Al\u00a0Capone all being aficionados. A “Talk of The Town” piece in The New Yorker,\u00a0from July 1930, breezily speaks of the thousand-dollar Panama on sale at Dobbs\u00a0department store downtown \u2014 and this in an age when a factory-fresh Buick would\u00a0set you back only $500.<\/p>\n
“We used to get a lot of good business out of Cuba back in the ’50s, before\u00a0the revolution,” recalls Rosendo Delgado, the doyen of old-time hat dealers in\u00a0Montecristi. Now nearly 90, he has been dealing in Panama hats since he was a\u00a0teenager, helping out in his father’s and grandfather’s hat business. “The rich\u00a0sugar planters back then would think nothing of spending a couple thousand\u00a0dollars to get the very best hats.”<\/p>\n
While there are still plenty of aficionados who will pay big money for a\u00a0Montecristi superfino, there are few people left who are able to weave them.\u00a0The old weavers have died or lost, through advanced age, the sharp eyes and\u00a0nimble fingers required to weave the very best. For the most part their\u00a0children have other aspirations.<\/p>\n
“Hat weaving was seen as a peasant occupation,” says Hawaiian-based Panama\u00a0hatter Brent Black, who has spent the past 25 years trying to preserve the art.\u00a0He became fascinated by the beauty and tradition of the dying art while on a\u00a0trip to South America in the 1980s and eventually quit the advertising game to\u00a0go into the hat trade himself, promoting the hats as examples of museum-quality\u00a0South American woven art and the weavers themselves as artists, representing\u00a0the few remaining master weavers and giving them commissions based on the final\u00a0sales prices their hats achieved \u2014 a first in the world of Panama hats. Black\u00a0has also established a weaving school in the village, which is supported by his\u00a0nonprofit Montecristi Foundation.<\/p>\n
“In Japan, an artisan who could weave like Simon would be regarded as a\u00a0living treasure,” he says. “In Ecuador, he’s a peasant. There’s something wrong\u00a0with that.”<\/p>\n
Complicating the picture are the amount of fraud and chicanery in the Panama\u00a0hat world and the scarcity of genuine Montecristi superfinos, of which only a\u00a0few dozen, at most, are made each year. “Few people outside the trade have ever\u00a0seen a really finely woven Montecristi,” says Black, “although a lot of people\u00a0think they have.”<\/p>\n
The big hat companies in Cuenca and Quito routinely sell commercial grade\u00a0hats as “genuine” Montecristis, as do prominent hatters and hat shops around\u00a0the world. Espinal, by contrast, makes perhaps three hats a year.<\/p>\n
It isn’t just scarcity and fineness of weave that distinguish a Montecristi\u00a0Panama from the rest. It’s an altogether different species of hat, from the\u00a0intricate preparation of the straw to the pattern of weave itself.\u00a0Montecristi’s weavers, steeped in hat-making tradition, use the more artistic\u00a0liso(herringbone) weave while those in the big commercial hat-weaving centers\u00a0like Cuenca use the faster and lighter, economically efficient brisa weave. The\u00a0liso weave is a tight, snug herringbone-patterned weave; brisa is a looser,\u00a0square pattern.<\/p>\n
Even more intriguing, and distinguishing, is the tag-team sequence of\u00a0specialist artisans who apply the finishing touches to each Montecristi hat\u00a0body and prepare it for blocking \u2014 specialists with romantic, Hemingway-esque\u00a0titles such as the rematador, the cortador, the apeleador and\u00a0the planchador.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the term rematador comes straight from the bullring \u2014 it is the\u00a0“finisher,” the one who dispatches a wounded bull, or in this case the\u00a0specialist who performs the complex back-weave to seal the brim and conclude\u00a0the weaving.<\/p>\n
The cortador gives the hat the closest of shaves, trimming away any straw\u00a0ends with a razor blade and the steadiest of hands, while the apeleador poundsthe fabric of the hat with a rounded hardwood mallet to better align the fibers\u00a0\u2014 a task that requires a nicety of judgment since too hard a blow can ruin the\u00a0hat while being too gentle won’t get the job done. The planchador, the last in\u00a0the chain, gives the hat body a good firm going-over with an iron to help give\u00a0it structure.<\/p>\n
Ideally, a well-crafted Montecristi can be styled without the need of\u00a0chemical stiffeners and glue, relying purely on the architecture of the straw.\u00a0Its color \u2014 ideally antique ivory, never harsh white \u2014 should come from the\u00a0sulfur smoking process the straw goes through during its preparation, not from\u00a0chemical bleaching.<\/p>\n
In fact, the overall process of making a Montecristi Panama hat is so\u00a0distinctive that Black has been funding a campaign for UNESCO to award the hats\u00a0Denomination of Origin status \u2014 a la French champagne or Parma ham. It is a\u00a0protection the hat companies, who have been trading on the Montecristi name for\u00a0years, have bitterly opposed. It may already be too late.<\/p>\n
“Go into the hat shops in Montecristi itself these days and you find\u00a0mass-produced hats from Cuenca being sold as genuine Montecristis,” says Black,\u00a0who has noticed an if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em resignation settling in over\u00a0the artisans in Montecristi, who are increasingly adopting the time-saving\u00a0shortcuts of the commercial hat companies, weaving not quite so finely and\u00a0relying on bleaches and stiffeners to do the work of artisans of the past.<\/p>\n
But not as yet in the holdout village of Pile, home to Simon Espinal and the\u00a0other half-dozen or so other weavers still capable of turning out a true\u00a0superfino. Most are middle age, if not older. It is an irony that in weaving\u00a0his greatest-ever hat, arguably the finest Panama in a century, possibly ever,\u00a0and never to be repeated, Simon Espinal may have touched the pinnacle of the\u00a0art just at its very end.<\/p>\n