I have been wearing leather hats for years, both caps and wide brim. The caps were good because I could pack them in suitcases while traveling and not worry about keeping them in shape. However, my leather brim hats were quite thick and stiff in construction. To maintain the shape of the wing, manufacturers sewed wire around the perimeter of the wing. This worked fine until I dropped the hat on its brim. Then I spent a lot of time shaping it. And I had to forget to pack one of these in anything other than a hat box (hard to find these days, except in antique stores). They did not travel well.
The Barmah Hats of Australia Squashy line is now available. They are styled inside, which means they are essentially cowboy hats, but with wings that don’t curve up like the American ones. Barmah Hats claims that I can fold these 2½ wide brim hats into bags, where they still manage to hold their shape. Each one even comes with its own cloth bag, as if challenging the owner to try the procedure. So I did it. I have two hats: the 1022CH and the 1026BR. The 1026BR is a dark leather soft brim hat, visually similar to a dark soft leather hat I bought in the nineties. How do they compare? First, the 1026BR is 20% lighter, eight ounces instead of ten. (Is there a reason for a heavy hat?) And, of course, it gets squashed. I rolled it up as instructed and took it on a trip to Florida. Leather hats are generally not a good fashion option in the Sunshine State, but Tampa was in the seventies so it wasn’t difficult. The 1026BR also has two vents that helped me ventilate. It flattened out pretty well, although it did have a crease on the crown for a few hours.
The 1022CH is also a dark brown fedora, but it has a striped finish that gives it a scruffy look. The strangest thing is that it is slightly smaller than the 1026BR, although the labels on both hats say “Large”. I can’t figure this out. The 1022CH is too large for a medium size, and the 1026BR is definitely not extra large. A word to the wise: try on your hats before you buy them. Happily, the hat seems to be responding to a stretching regimen better than others I’ve had. It may be because the inner sweatband is made of a stretchy material rather than a tight, inflexible fabric. Barmah Hats does not recommend that you keep your leather hats rolled up for an extended period as they will soon adapt to the new shapes you put on them.
Aside from the size hassle, I highly recommend these leather hats. Its design seems quite evolved to me. Both are better thought out than the fifteen-year-old counterpart mentioned above, which in itself was a breakthrough on their flexible sixties ancestor so loved by hippies. They are also comfortable to wear. Because they are so flexible, I can wear them while driving, pressed against the headrest. I could never handle this position with any other wide-brimmed leather hat.