Memories of a hatter

old hat making tools

Deciding to become a hatmaker is one thing, collecting all the tools you need an adventure on it's own. Most of our tools are from a hatter in Tomelloso, a small town located almost 200 kilometres from Madrid. This hatter, on his turn, got his hat blocks from Manuel Padilla Crespo, a well known hatter from Andalucía who opened his own hat shop in Madrid in 1950.

I remember that driving back by car - our treasures in the trunk - we felt calm and proud to continue a tradition which is getting rare. Restoring all the hat blocks, one by one, kept us busy for months and left us with blisters on our hands. By getting to know all our blocks so well we were presented to our future hats. And although we would buy more hat blocks – at antique markets, auctions and online – this was the beginning, our beginning, the start of Maleza.

To our great surprise, just after buying (some of) the hat blocks of Manuel Padilla Crespo, we discovered he had written a book called “Memories of a hatter” where he recalls his youth: growing up poor, his apprenticeship in Andújar (South of Spain) and his final success as a hatter in Córdoba, Sevilla and Madrid.

The most beautiful fragment of the book is at page 131 where Manuel writes:

(…) “the hat must be given a mix of ingredients: love, intelligence, taste ... With the felt hat body in your hands, and before putting the stiffener to the crown, you look at the hat, look at it again, talk to it and ask: "Are you going to behave well?" And (after you have done this) the felt hat body always responds with a firm “yes”. Some of them will cheat on you, or act rebellious; these are given a "smack", and that way they are also subjected to obedience. But, as a general rule, when you treat the hats well, they´ll give you their soul."