hello it's kevin from pork pie hatters today the subject is going to be how to take care of your hats um very basic a lot of people forget the most important thing don't set your hats down on the brim um sounds like an exaggeration but 99 of the problems that happen to these hats you know when they get out of shape and they get all messed up it all comes from setting them down like this on your your dresser or whatever and uh you know just kind of picking it up every day you do one of these you just grab it and if you stop yourself right in mid grab you realize what you're doing you're basically you're squeezing your hat you know really hard it's like a hard pinch and it's totally distorted and you're doing it in the same place rather aggressively thousands and thousands of times every day you pick it up pick it up etc etc you know after five years of this um it's thousands and thousands of pickups you know imagine if i just sat here for a thousand thousand times doing it um the front will get messed up so um that's what happens the front of the hat starts to collapse from grabbing it and it just sort of looks a little pinched and narrow and doesn't fit you right anymore the other thing that happens is that the brim has a certain kind of a curve on uh on a fedora it's called a snap brim the um the curve to it is called the flange um flange i think comes from the prefix means thumb or finger or something like that so the flange of the hat is like this little finger curve it's a roll and that is basically what allows your hat to keep its shape and allows it to flip up and down up and down it's that curve now if that curve is gone or becomes just very subtle you know it's almost gone what happens is the brim becomes flat and there's really no way where for it to flip up or down it's just sort of where it is and it becomes very soft and flat the hat starts to get a floppy kind of a scarecrows just like an old rained on kind of bums hat or something a vagrant it gets this look like an old messed up hat um you want to preserve the curve so basically the long and the short of it is when you store your hat you uh you get these hats rained on most of the time it's not the rain that kills these hats it's what you do with the hat after the rain most people take their hat they grab it they take off put it flat like this so the front now is going to dry kind of messed up it's going to lock into that shape now this shape is not supposed to be in this hat it's supposed to be more like pop it out like this now um if you grab the hat like this and you put it down on the table that's going to be how it stiffens up the next day and it will kind of lock in this sort of grip shape from your hands that will become your new permanent shape that it locks to every day the second thing will happen is that the brim will sag from being so wet it just has so much weight in it it falls down just gravity droops and when it dries and sort of stiffens up it does so flat like a straight edge because it's lying on the shelf it just sort of follows the curve the uh the line of the shelf and draws flat so you've got a messed up brim you got a messed up crown all because you left the hat flat okay this is what you do with a hat i show you what you don't do you take your hat off your head there's a checklist it's four things first thing you do is you make sure that the pinch and the creases are where they should be generally you have two pinches and a center crease or sometimes a teardrop but there's a shape on top there's two on the sides you want to make sure that they are intact where they should be so sometimes you can pop it out and then just pop it back in with very light pressure you just tap it and fold right into place same here touch it boom they're like little footprints they're all all ready for the shapes that just pop pop so number one is make sure that the crown shape is where it should be shaped correctly okay so when it dries that world shape will harden to the correct shape number two the brim should be in the up position so you're the kind of guy who wears its brim down like this which is pretty standard and correct when you take your wet hat off or dry hat actually wet or dry you flip it back up brim is in the up position to preserve the curve okay number two got number one make sure those are correct number two make sure this is in the up position okay number three the brim should not be on the surface of the table no weight on the brim so number three is either hang the hat or set it upside down invert the hat on a table desk shelf whatever the theory is no weight on the brim okay weight on the crown is fine this is a very strong shape you're not gonna mess this part up by having the weight of hat on it this will get ruined if there's weight on it okay so upside down we're hung up shapes are intact brim is in the up position that's three things the fourth thing to remember when you store your hat wet or dry keep it away from heat so that means if your house has blasting steam and you just have one of those homes that's just really really warm in the winter because your radiator is just you know really hot as soon as you enter your house that you could just feel the heat that's like putting a wet hat into a dryer or something like a wool sweater and a dryer it you could shrink um not everybody has this problem but some people do so if you have a wet hat after you've done your checklist those three things you make sure it's in a cool place no heat so it's a room temperature or a cool place so basically hang it put it upside down crack the window in the bathroom in the kitchen or something just let it a little fresh air on it okay so it doesn't dry in a very hot dry environment near your radiator or something that's it there's no chance of your hat dog shrinking even a millimeter that way you did everything right the next morning you look at your hat it should be intact fine you should flip the brim down it's everything is fine um it's not the rain and it's not the snow that messes these hats up it's us basically you have to sit the hat the right way when they're wet and when they're dry but especially when they're wet that's when the hat becomes a little bit more vulnerable so what i like to do when the hat is dry everyday storage stick it up on the wall or put it upside down when the hat is wet a little bit more intensive i make sure that the brim is off too and i hang it i stick it upside down that's it now this kind of stuff i generally check when it's wet too uh the creases doesn't really matter so much when it's dry but you get the theory um they dry any way you leave it okay i'm not gonna talk about that anymore um what else was i getting that storage of hats okay the next thing is stacking your hats a lot of people have many many hats and what they do is they stack them on top of each other like this uh it's not great it's not good you see the bands here you see that little wrinkle that comes from a hat on top mashing the band down stacking your hats will do that so if i look at this stack there might be some messed up bands in here most likely the bottom one because there's a lot of weight but anyway you're asking for trouble if you stack your hats if you have to stack it you put something in between your hats um like little separators of space there's a stack of hats on the wall in between i have oh there's one missing here okay piece of cellophane it's called a dust cover now if you need these i can give you a couple of these you know if you come by the shop or something this basically keeps the dust off your hat when it's hung up or upside down and it keeps the band from wrinkling so the top hat will smash this one here and make wrinkles you can see there's a wrinkle in there already i'm not that worried because i could steam it out here with my steamer but the hat below with the cellophane on it is intact there is a wrinkle here probably what happens is a lot of times the customers will you know sort of mess these hats up and stack them wrong it's part of having the store and it's no big deal because we just steam it out but it just shows you that you need to separate hats if you're going to stack it i recommend not stacking it but if you need to save room and do it separate them if you can't put cellophane you put rings rings of foam or rings of cardboard you could make a piece of cardboard like a strip about i don't know yay big or something make it into a ring just staple it and just put hat ring hat ring i don't know if i have any examples of that here but um a lot of people put rings in between their hats too and that's just just as well uh just as good but it takes up a little bit more room when you use rings i would say try to avoid the stacking altogether if you can anything else i could say about storing your hats and taking care of your hats keep them away from heat especially if you have a leather sweatband inside generally a fur felt hat can never really shrink although it does happen sometimes to some people some rare people but it's the leather inside that shrinks it dries out and dehydrates every year from the steam in your house gets smaller and smaller and smaller so if you have a leather band inside your hat it's great but watch the heat keep it away from hot closets etc etc keep it in a cool place especially in the off season anything else taking care of your hats if you have a felt hat or a straw hat it's a good thing to bring it into the hat shop now and then try to do it once a year at least have me reshape it clean it um we do it free you know so i'm glad to do it if you're in town what you can do is get some packing tape make little rings of that you know plastic packing tape used to seal boxes and just get all of the lint off of it this works great it sounds pretty low-tech or amateurish but it's the best thing for a wool felt hat and it works great on a fur felt hat it'll make your hat look really new and just brand new neat and polished in a pinch if you're you have an appointment you want your hat to look brand new just get the tape out keep going until it's completely clean most of the time that's almost all you need when people bring me you know hats i wonder you know they thought about this they could have saved themselves a trip but it's a good thing to do if a hat is waterproof it's cool but if you have a layer of dust on your hat and then snow goes on top of it or rain mixes with that dust dust plus rain or dust plus water equals mud it makes a film and your hat starts to get this kind of old look to it it gets uh just sort of like a film or like a cloudy look so dust your hat especially if you think it's going to rain don't go out with your dusty hats or bring it in and let me do it anything else i could say about hat care people ask me all the time is it okay to take your hats off by the pinch like this i would say yes it's okay but don't pick it up by the pinch use a lot more force and you know you can stop yourself just by storing it the right way if your hat is upside down you're not going to grab it by the pinch you're naturally going to grab it by the brim and every time you grab it it'll be in different places if your hat is stored the wrong way like this you're going to grab it by the pinch you just don't think we all do it you know so store it the right way and don't worry about taking your hat off uh unless you've been reading the newspaper a lot or something and you know maybe if you get news print on your hat you're probably fine um that's about it i don't think there's really too much more to say if you have any more questions about uh hat care um straw hats or felt hats most of the stuff i said today was about felt hats but many apply for straw hats too straw hats cannot get wet don't let them get wet if they do get wet dry it the same way i said flip the brim up hang it and let the guy at the hat store deal with it i can try to straighten it out for you if it loses its shape but don't try to do it yourself it's difficult to reshape a straw hat and that's about it any other questions feel free to use the comments below or you know you can give me a call or an email the quickest way is just to use the comments because you know i'll get that right away and i'd be glad to talk about you know hat nerdy stuff uh hat care tech and um that's about it this is kevin from pork pie hatters thanks for watching