The Fall and Winter 2008 Catalog
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Why is it that the finest straw hats for men in the entire world, those Montecristi hats made painstakingly by hand, those Montecristi hats that can cost $10,000 each, why is it they come from a little village called Montecristi in Ecuador? Well, I recently came across an article reprint from the New Yorker Magazine, circa 1930, which read, "There are only thirteen weavers in the world able to turn out hats light enough and fine enough in texture to be worth $1,000 dollars. All thirteen are Inca Indians, living in one town, Montecristi, in the mountains of Ecuador. It takes each man three months to a year to make one of these hats." [more]
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Okay, a lot has changed over the years, but some things are still the same: the number of such craftsman is still declining, while the village of Montecristi is still very much the heartland of exceptional woven hats. It's also true that there really are Montecristi Panama hats so finely woven, so rare, that both their beauty (and prices) can take your breath away, and the $10K Montecristi Panama from Brent Black does indeed take from three months to a year to weave.
These Montecristi hats (more popularly known as Panamas, because Panama was once the great trading center where most of them were bought and sold) do come in lesser rows of weave per inch, which brings down their prices accordingly. The Montecristi Aficionado Fedora Panama Hat and The Montecristi Classic are examples of this more affordable work of hat art.
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