HATS!
Cuenca hat, really white.
Montecristi hat. It is not super white, and woven so finely. This is where I believe hats of this quality belong, behind glass.
This is in Hat Museum (Homero Ortega)
Homero Ortega hat I got, just for show.
Sigsig, the town where Cuenca hats are mostly woven.
The straw this lady has will most likely get turned into a hat.
Sigsig church.
Back to Cuenca, I bought a white Cuenca hat here before Montecristi.
As a traveller, I always try to have a purpose. In Argentina, it was volunteering on a farm, in Bolivia it was learning Spanish, in Peru it was re-connecting to much loved friends. My main purpose for Ecuador; hats. Known as "Panama Hats", in Ecuador they are known as "Sombreros de Paja Toquilla", paja toquilla being the type of straw they are made from. They exported them to Panama many years ago and the misnomer was born.
So I arrived in Cuenca, googling and youtubing like mad to learn as much as I could about the history, the difference in approach from the different hat making towns, if there was any. I was in a place loaded with nice hat stores, what would be the point of going to Montecristi with such abundance in Cuenca?
Ecuador has two main places that are renowned for their straw hats. Cuenca and Montecristi. Cuenca has hats that are fine. Montecristi has hats that will make your jaw drop if you find yourself in the right part of town. Cuenca hats use oxygen and peroxide bleaches to produce ultra white hats, Montecristi uses sulfur, for a light and more natural colour.
With Montecristi hats, the weavers live 1 1/2 hours out of Montecristi in a rural place caled Pile. Cuenca weavers culminate around the town of Sigsig, 1 hour out of town.
I entered my first Cuenca store. Some nice looking hats. Then I asked if they have any Montecristi hats in store. They did, the lady brought it out from the store-room. It was beautifully woven. It was $700. It was time to go.
I entered my second Cuenca store. I bought a two toned hat, nice to wear for shits and giggles. In another store, a nice short brimmed white Cuenca hat, it suited me nice and both good value. I called it a day. Another place was calling me on my ultimate hat search. And due to geography, I knew would get better bang for my buck in Montecristi for the quality I was looking for.
In Montecristi I walked around. Observed. I saw a place I recognised from a youtube clip. It seemed closed, but an older lady inside spotted me spying the joint, opened the door and invited me in. I was in front of a man in his mid 30s and was offered the choice of turning an unblocked hat into any of the many shapes on offer from an old catalogue. But what if I wasn't happy with he outcome, what type of hat would suit my head in the face of so much choice? He took me to his cousins store. She had even finer options. I wasn't sure on what to pull the trigger on though. I came to town with a figure of $300 to spend and wanted to get it correct first time. I took some time out to think.
But as I left, a man told me of another store where the finest come from. His name was Carlos. What was for sure, was that the finest of the fine so far weren't on the main strip. He phoned up Victoria Delgado, I had seen her in a documentary and was told her husband is the most well known hat dealer in Montecristi, he is in his 80s. After being shown multiple works of art in her store, I decided on one hat, but wanted to reshape the style. They drove me to the hat blocker, I selected a less pointy front of hat than usual styles, without the old fashioned round styles. The steam machine press down, though they left the ribbon on as they shaped it. There was an indent in my investment where the ribbon was when we took them off, because I opted for a horse hair band when I initially described what I want. I guess even at an old age, the hat people still have lessons to learn. After being stressed for a while after the purchase, I returned to Victoria and she ironed it out...literally. Contentment for $300. Two months of work for the weaver.
I left happy, at lunch I bumped into Carlos again. He asked me if I want to see the finest of the finest. I said yes. He said just a week earlier someone spent $1400 on a hat from this place. What happens is these hats are sold in the U.S. upwards of $10,000. A while back he said on was auctioned for $60,000 in the U.S. People buy up the finest raw hats in Pile, then they get shaped in other countries and sold to celebrities and the mega-rich. The weavers in Pile just make their basic wage without benefiting to the fullest from the true wealth their talent creates overseas.
So we knock on this unassuming door. No signs, nothing to let you know hats were in there. So in we went. Into a special room with locked chests, soon unlocked. The fineness of these hats was ridiculous. 6 months of weaving for one hat. But besides the admiration of work, they were so uniform in their weaving to the point of having some of the character taken. later Carlos crystallised this thought for me; "Blando", bland. I was satisfied I didn't need to spend $1000. I was fine with just seeing them. They were like the first photo.
So there it is, Ecuador; You can explore the beauty of the Galapagos, soar the heights of the tallest volcanoes........or you can buy hats.
Love,
Ruben.
The rest of the photos are from Montecristi
Victoria
Victoria's Hat Store
The bloke reshaping my hat into a shape I like.
Ta daaaaa!
Just looks like an unassuming regular Ecuadorian town from the main strip through.
