Fedora?

I found an old fedora at a thrift shop near where I live, and was suprised when I found how much I enjoy wearing it. It's old and not of high quality even when it was new.

So... I want to buy a nice one, traditional styling in charcoal with a medium brim, but of good quality. Can I do this for about $100? Gentlemen of the board, sugestions?

Thank you all.

You can get a very respectable Bailey or Dobbs for that amount.

Browse this shop for some ideas, you can sort by price or manufacturer or both.

http://www.hats-plus.com/

It's far from you, so I'm not suggesting you buy there (though they do ship), but you can get an idea of quality hats here for your price range.

Check out the Bailey Carson. Great quality fur felt. Lined and has a finished stitiched brim. A classic look.

Dag-gone-it Phil! You beat me to the punch. I agree 100% with your advice, especially the Bailey Carson. I own the senate version and am very pleased with it. Hats Plus is a good company to do business with as well.

Generally you get what you pay for. I wouldn't go below $120-$140. The felt is everything and good felt is expensive. However, you can get some very good deals on vintage hats.

You might explore:

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/

There is a buy/sell section there in their forum. Also, don't exclude:

http://www.millerhats.com/
or
http://www.optimohats.com/

I would recommend perusing the fedora lounge and learning a bit about hats before shopping. Crown height, bash (crease) and brim width are important to suit one's individual taste.

A quality hat will last more than a lifetime.

http://christys-hats.com/shop

Here is mine-

pal said:

Dag-gone-it Phil! You beat me to the punch. I agree 100% with your advice, especially the Bailey Carson. I own the senate version and am very pleased with it. Hats Plus is a good company to do business with as well.

Click to expand...

I have that very hat in that very color!

Go to

http://www.davidmorgan.com

and look at some of the Australian Akubra hats. They are probably some of the best quality for the money out there.

I have a couple of the Banjo Patterson model, somewhat of a crossover between a dress fedora and a sport hat. It is of their best quality fur felt and has a hatband made of some kind of fish skin which looks quite dressy, yet casual at the same time. After 4 years the felt is nice and soft and shows no wear. It's my everyday go to hat and at $150 current price is an excellent value.

They have some of a "lesser" quality fur they call Imperial quality, which is a bit thicker and stiffer. Other than that it looks good and wears well.

I have a few custom made models costing 2-4 times the price and like the Akubra just as well as the expensive models.

Oh boy, I'll have to thank myself. Usually I'm one of those guys who throws away anything that I don't need at the moment, at least to the storage. This time, I happened to stumble to a Christy's of London handmade fedora that I had bought around 7 years ago, but was too babyface to keep on then. I was almost sure, that I had thrown it away, but no - found it, took it back upstairs, tried it and ... it's perfect!

Who said that aging is a bad thing?

When you are ready to step up to the highest quality available & have a good chunk of change to spend, I second Optimo Hats in Chicago.

I can second Bailey and Dobb. I have a Bailey bowler that I picked up at a local hat shop. I also looked at the Dobbs they had there, but they didn't what I wanted even though the hats I saw were well made.

+1 for Akubra, I ordered mine from Hats Direct in Australia but I've heard good things about David Morgan.