The world’s most famous hat has been misnamed for 170 years

Unless I am an elite haggler, the price difference between the handwoven Panama hat he’s cradling in his white-gloved hands and one from a stack in the nearby souvenir shops or mini-marts of Panama City will be $US4875 ($7502).

Earlier, to my uninitiated, unappreciative eyes, these simple pinched-front fedora-style straw hats were all the same; a Sinatra-like historical anomaly, headwear of choice for sunstruck, mojito-swilling vacationers, cameoing on the heads of celebrities every few fashion cycles.

Today I’ve enlightened myself, however, on a self-imposed quest to find the peak Sombrero Panama in Panama City’s UNESCO-listed old town, Casco Viejo. I try on 25-buck “fakes” in bargain basements and peruse comely $US180 ($275) numbers in boutiques of reasonable repute.

Many a local has pointed me towards El Palacio del Sombrero, reportedly the Panamanian capital’s premier hat shop, where I’m currently scrutinising one that sells for $US5000 ($7640).

Salesman Bryant Villa spots incredulity in my rolling eyes so he schools me in the qualities of what he considers to be the best Panama hat in all of Panama. The two most crucial markers of top-shelf quality, apparently, are the size of the straw fibre used (the finer, the better) and the tightness of weave (for a balance of sun protection and breathability).

“In basic quality hats, you’ll see a two-fibre weave just near to the band, but all this one is that kind of weave,” he says. “This is hard work and takes the artisan more time.”

A basic example of a genuine article can be finished in 10 days while the $US5000 specials like this can take up to eight months to produce, from field to head. It is a “33 grade”, that being the number of points or strands in every square inch.

Even El Palacio del Sombrero’s cheapest Panama hat, which sells for $US60 ($90 and negotiable), must be flexible and robust enough to pass “the test” – it cannot lose shape after being rolled into its wooden travel box for 36 hours.

The classic Panama style dictates that hats be white or of natural-straw colour, with a black band. The variable-width brim slopes down in front and up at the back. But each handmade item is ripe with nuance, says Byrant. They must not only be fitted to your head but matched with your face, too.

They sell no synthetic machine-made hats, which are less flexible and portable and, frankly, rubbish. “You can tell a hat’s handmade by the little flower shape in the middle of the crown. It’s the artisan’s signature – a must.”

Paradoxically, the most fundamental quality of a genuine Panama hat is that it has to be made in Ecuador. The tag inside “my” $US5000 hat reads: “Handmade in Ecuador. 100 per cent Paja Toquilla. Montecristi”.

“Some people think Montecristi is the brand, but it’s actually the name of a town in Ecuador with good-quality artisans.”

Toquilla straw hats, as they are also known, have been made from the eponymous native palm leaves in towns like Montecristi and Jipijapa (in Manabí Province) since the Spanish conquest. Bryant regularly visits his artisans to “learn the process and understand the products”.

Ecuador’s UNESCO-recognised national hat has been sold in this trade-hub country since the 1850s, which is when the misnaming began. A disturbing-looking dummy sitting in the corner of the shop’s hermetically sealed VIP lounge – complete with a handle-bar moustache and monocle – is an unsubtle clue as to why the name stuck.

Said dummy, US president Theodore Roosevelt Jr, famously wore a Panama hat when he visited during the Panama Canal’s construction in 1906. He believed the Ecuadorians (and other) workers he saw also wearing the hats to be locals, and the anomaly was never truly corrected.

Oddly enough, Panama has its own hand-woven UNESCO-recognised national hat: el sombrero pintao (painted hat). Byrant believes, and I unreservedly agree, that it’s far less elegant, stylish and of inferior quality to the Ecuadorian toquilla hat. Basically, it’s something “farmers wear”.

Casco Viejo is a touristy, ritzy seaside quarter of Panama City, replete with high-end restaurants and grandiose government buildings. An area metaphorically walled off from the surrounding crumbling neighbourhoods, which hotels warn tourists about (mine gave me a local map with areas marked “not safe” and “daytime only”).

Everyday Panamanians would have to spend every cent of four months’ salary to secure one of El Palacio del Sombrero’s top-shelf traveller’s hat. But it does sell three or four $US5000 Panama hats each year, mostly to Europeans whistle-stopping into Panama City on a cruise excursion.

Just to be clear, I was not one of those three or four people – my pathetic, token offer too low to even register as an insult.

The details

Visit
Australians are granted a 180-day visa on arrival in Panama (but proof of funds and an onward ticket will be required). Smartraveller currently advises a “high degree of caution” when visiting Panama. See smartraveller.com.au

Fly
United Airlines flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Panama City via Houston. See united.com

The writer travelled at his own expense.