The making of a summer-weight beaver felt hat

That may sound like a contradiction. Traditionally, beaver felt – tough, durable and warm – was and is used for winter dress hats. In the summer, the option is usually straw because it is lighter. That said, anyone who’s worn a tightly woven panama hat on a hot day knows that after a couple of hours, the top of your head is roasting. It’s the price we pay for keeping the sun off our faces while looking elegant. But could a beaver felt hat be made just as light as a panama?

Stephen Temkin of Leon Drexler, who has made me a couple of hats in the past, is working on an experiment. It’s inspired by some of his warm weather customers. One fellow in Australia and another in New Orleans have both requested summer-weight hats, despite Stephen’s concerns that beaver would be too hot. The guys have insisted, so Stephen has started cooking up his latest hat “The Cruiser.” He asked me if I would be a test subject and try one of the first models he’s working on right now. Like I would say “no.”

While being made of beaver, it will differ from his regular line of dress hats in a few important details: the top of the hat will be welter weight, due to a substantially thinned crown; the hat will be lined with linen instead of silk; Stephen will use a perforated leather sweat band and; two grommets will be added to each side of the hat to help with ventilation. Each hat will have a curled brim covered in silk. A new feature, purely for stylistic reasons, will be a “French Blue” como silk ribbon, pleated to invoke the look of old pith helmets.

The hat will come in three colour variations, “tusk,” “limestone” and “buff”, all within the tan range. The tart pan brim curl will be covered with silk that complements the hat colours. And the hat will have a slightly narrower brim than his regular range, at just under 2.5″.

Stephen has started work on a rough prototype to test out how much he can thin the crown, putting in grommets and pleating the band. It gives you a good idea of what the finished Cruiser might look like:

The hats remind me a lot of this one worn by Rudolph Valentino – I can only hope it will make me look half as rakish.

I will report back in the coming months when the hat is finished, at which point Stephen will hopefully be ready to start taking orders for “The Cruiser.”

[The Cruiser is now complete. Click here to read the full story.]