Digital design always leaves a hole that drives me to get my (literal) hands dirty. I’ve loved hats since I was a kid, so naturally, what started as renovating a vintage hat turned into Raleigh Hat Co.—a full-blown hat made-to-order hat company recreating hats from the early 20th century.
The hat industry has been dead for over half a century and there are only a dozen or so hatmakers left in the world. Both of these facts make it incredibly hard to learn the craft, access equipment, and find quality materials. And when things do come together, there's the challenge of educating people on how to wear hats and why a good hat costs more—and finally, you need to reach a very small and niche audience.
Over the course of a few years, I collected 18th-century books, dug through old YouTube footage, and scoured the web for anything at all on hatmaking. The whole process of making a hat is a very hands-on, manual process. It involves everything from steaming, sanding and ironing to delicately sewing and shaping. It was very much about learning from mistakes and experimentation.
Hobbies should probably be kept as hobbies if you want to enjoy them. Raleigh Hat Co. may return one day as a real scalable business, but for now it will remain something I challenged myself with, gleaned tremendous lessons from, and ultimately decided wasn't for me.
