Hat People
We are Artisan Hat Makers, making hats in Oregon as a family since 1978. We make mainly traditional Old-European hat styles, but we also explore innovative and whimsical designs. Our main venue for sales is the artisan markets and festivals of the Pacific Northwest. We also sell from our hat booth inventory online, and make special order hats to be shipped worldwide.
Our hats are designed to be washable -by hand, no washer or dryer- directions are on the sewn tag of each hat. The brims of our hat brims are sewn layers of cloth, they can roll up to carry in your pocket. We work in all natural fabrics: cotton, linen, hemp, and wool. Although our wool hats can be worn for style anytime, they are especially good for the rain and snow. Wool is naturally resistant to water, and even if the hat gets wet through it will still keep you warm. On the other hand, being a natural fiber, it breathes; this means that if you wear our wool hats on a sunny day you will not be uncomfortable.
All our hats have a cotton lining. This means that with the wool hats, none of the wool touches your skin.The cotton, hemp or linen hats are good for mid-weather or summertime. If you are out and about in one of these hats, and it is especially hot weather, you can always dunk the hat in cold water and throw it on your head.
Although our hats adjust to size, they only go smaller. The Sports Cap and Touring Cap styles have an elastic strap built into the lower band. Our innovative designs all adjust in various ways, with the exclusion of the Brimless Hat styles Hoodie High Hat and Insider- these hats are built to be a customer’s exact size. In general, we make hats in a great variety of sizes with the intention that anyone walking into our hat booth can find a hat that fits. The size adjustment feature works great but only within a margin of transition- the hats are not “one size fits all.” If you torque on the elastic too much then you are fit to the elastic sizing instead of the wholistic structure of the hat. Generally the margin is 3/4” of size change (that’s saying if your size is 23”, you will probably be fine in a hat that is 23 3/4”, but a hat that is size 24” is just too big.) Anyways, what this detail is saying comes to this: please freely enjoy the websites, but know that if you want to get one of our hats you will need to know your precise head size. Even 1/4” makes a difference. I know this seems like nutty extra work, but know that this is directly connected to our threshold of artisanship quality. Our hats are nice, our hats are designed to fit well.
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Thank you for your support, please enjoy our hats and websites!
If you are able to meet us at one of markets or festivals, we look forward to seeing you emerge from the crowd.
Sincerely,
- Founders Jim & Carol Young, son Jacob@thehats, daughter Mama Rose