Field Notes

Brim shape plays a central role in how a felt hat behaves in wear. Beyond appearance, the width, curvature, and edge treatment of a brim determine balance, stability, and long-term durability. This article examines common brim shapes and techniques, including western profiles and curled edges, and explains how these structural choices affect both making and wearing felt hats.

In felt hatmaking, crown shape plays a central role in how a hat fits, wears, and holds its form over time. While crown names are often treated as stylistic labels, they reflect underlying structural decisions shaped by head anatomy, felt behavior, and method of construction. This article explains the functional differences between common crown shapes and why those differences matter in both making and wearing hats.

The cowboy hat developed as practical headwear for people working outdoors in the American West. Its wide brim provided sun and weather protection, while its structured crown allowed airflow and durability in high wind. These features were not aesthetic choices but functional responses to environmental conditions.

To understand the beaver is to uncover a forgotten story about how this land once worked, how it was nearly broken, and why one of nature’s greatest engineers may be the key to restoring it again.

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the fur trade stood at the center of a global exchange that linked wilderness to empire.  At its heart was the beaver, whose dense underfur made possible the felt hats that defined European fashion and power for centuries. 

Amid all our acceleration, there remains the simple fact that the world is still worthy of care. Wendell Berry’s fields and Nick Offerman’s forests both remind us that reverence is learned through work, not wonder alone. The carpenter’s grain, the hatmaker’s felt, the farmer’s furrow, each reveals the same quiet truth: beauty survives in what is tended.

Beavers may not look like climate heroes, but their dams do the work of billion-dollar infrastructure. If beavers were a new technology, we’d call them revolutionary. In reality, they’re proof that sometimes the best climate solutions come not from machines, but from letting nature get back to work.

Sauvie Island, nestled between the Columbia River and Multnomah Channel, played a brief but pivotal role in the 19th-century beaver fur trade. In the 1830s, it was home to Fort William, an American outpost aimed at intercepting pelts bound for the British-controlled Hudson’s Bay Company. 

In 2014, Pharrell Williams walked onto the Grammy stage wearing an oversized felt hat that instantly became a viral sensation. But behind the memes and fast-food chain jokes was a story decades in the making, one that began with Vivienne Westwood’s radical 1982 Nostalgia of Mud collection, passed through Malcolm McLaren’s hip-hop collaborations, and found new life in Pharrell’s homage to street culture and avant-garde fashion. 

Cheap wool and polyester hats dominate store shelves, but their low prices hide a bigger story. From petroleum-based synthetics that shed microplastics into waterways to “100% wool” labels that mask blends with inferior fibers, today’s mass-market hats are built for speed, not longevity. 

Once a swamp-dwelling menace, now a millinery gem. Nutria, the invasive rodent that reshaped Louisiana’s wetlands, has found new life in the hat industry. This story follows its unlikely journey from the bayou to the brim, exploring its history, the environmental efforts behind its harvest, and why its soft, durable felt has become a respected alternative to beaver in fine hat making.

Ever wonder why hat makers can’t just take a freshly trapped beaver and turn it straight into a hat? The journey from pelt to a fine beaver-felt crown is anything but direct. This deep dive follows the fur from North American wetlands through the few remaining felting mills in the world, revealing the hidden processing steps, global supply chain, and specialized skills that transform raw fiber into the hat bodies artisans rely on.