Resident hat whisperer Edwin Urrita demonstrates how to dust a straw hat.

Depending on where and how you stored it, that trusty panama, milan or shantung might need a little dusting.

Dusting a straw hat is a simple task, but it must be done carefully. Straw blocking is easily damaged.

All you will need to dust your straw hat is a soft, damp (barely moist) cloth.

Do you remember the #1 enemies of fur felt hats? Water and heat. Those are the same enemies of straw hats. Make absolutely certain that your cloth is not wet, dripping, sopping or soaking.

Just damp.

Regardless of whether you have a straw fedora, pork pie, Homburg or boater, be mindful of the weave of the straw. In most cases you will start gently wiping the hat with the damp cloth from the center of the crown and dust counterclockwise. Work your way down to the brim, and be sure to get both the top and bottom.

Be careful not to rest the damp cloth for too long in one spot, as you don’t want to moisten, warp or otherwise damage the straw. Also remember not to grasp the straw too tightly, especially by the pinch, as the straw is liable to crack or become misshapen. (And, sadly, there isn’t much to be done about restoring or reblocking straw.)

Don’t be daunted. Once you get the hang of it, you will be able to dust a straw hat lickety split.

Watching people tailgate, line up to enter Cowboy Stadium or cheer their teams, you’ll notice a sharp contrast between modern fans and fans of yesteryear. In 2011, the fans are wearing an assortment of T-shirts, sweatshirts and ball caps. Yet 80, or even 40, years ago, every game was a big game. Ladies wore nice dresses, and men wore suits, ties and a vast array of dress hats and caps.

Nearly a hundred years ago, everybody wore a nice hat to a ball game! You might not see many at this year's Super Bowl, but check out the fedoras, bowlers and more here at the 1913 World Series!

This photograph of the 1913 World Series at the Polo Grounds in New York is a priceless contrast to today’s fans. News service telegraph operators and fans are all decked out in great outfits. Just look at all the hats! Men are wearing fedoras, bowlers, newsboy caps, pork pie hats and skimmers (a.k.a. boaters). It was the same for football, except they’d add overcoats, scarves and gloves to the mix to battle the cold.

You might see a handful of stylish people wearing a hat other than a ball cap at this year’s Super Bowl, but wouldn’t it be fun to re-establish a classier look. Try it. Every trend starts with one person. Start with a nice hat at your next event and work your way down with the clothes as you feel comfortable.

Writer Nathaniel Cerf tries to set the retro fashion trend of wearing great hats to sporting events by wearing a Biltmore Eleganza to the first college football game played a Wrigley Field since 1938. It was the Northwestern Wildcats vs. The Fighting Illini.

As you can see, I took the first step while attending the first college football game at Wrigley Field since 1938. It was the Northwestern Wildcats vs. the Fighting Illini. (Does the purple give away my team preference?) I decided to go all out with a three-piece suit topped by a navy blue Biltmore Eleganza fedora. Let me tell ya., layers at a game near the Chicago lakefront in late November are the most amazingly wonderful thing. I was happy to see a couple other people in some nice ivies, newsboys and fedoras, but I seemed to be the only one to go all out in full retro garb.

If you are lookin’ to give it a try, basketball and hockey are still in full swing. Best of all, pitchers and catchers report for spring training in just two weeks! Our winter suffering will end soon!

Storing a hat is actually a good idea to help extend its life. It helps to keep it from getting too dirty or dusty and minimizes exposure to other elements that might harm it.

The ideal way to store a hat is in hat box. Place it upside down in the box. This will help keep the brim from flattening out. If your hat has a snap brim, make sure the brim is snapped up all the way around the hat. This helps the brim to keep its shape. It also helps to keep it from flattening out if it somehow gets dropped or flipped and restored right-side up.

Store the box on a clean, flat and dry surface. Remember that heat and moisture help to shrink hats. Keep your hat from being stored in the sun or near a heating vent.

Even if you don’t have a hat box, just follow these simple rules, and your hat should be okay on top of a closet shelf or some other place safe from children, pets, etc.

Hat firmly back on your head, you don’t worry about it until you’re back on your front steps. “Wait a second,” you say to yourself. “Snow is just frozen water. Water isn’t good for felt hats. What do I do?”

It is true that water and heat are your hat’s two biggest common enemies. Both can shrink or deform your hat in a hurry. While most dress hats or fur felt hats aren’t considered water resistant, keeping them safe is relatively easy.

Before you go inside, shake off as much snow as you can. Be careful not to brush or grind and melt the snow into your hat. Once in your home, find a flat, clean, dry surface to place your hat without fear that Fido or the cats will get to it. Then turn down the leather sweatband. Rest the hat on the sweatband, making sure not to let the brim touch the table top. Let the hat dry slowly and naturally.

DO NOT place it on the stove, over a heating vent or radiator or under very hot lights. Although heat will dry your hat faster, it also will shrink it.

DO NOT let the felt touch any surface. If you rest the wet hat on its brim to dry, the brim will most likely lose its shape. If your hat has a snap brim, you might even want to snap the brim up as you let it dry.

They have a full-time make up and hair crew that falls upon the actors like a squad of commandos as soon as the cameras stop rolling.

However, if you want to minimize the effect of wearing a hat on your hair style, here are some simple guidelines.

Always hold your hat by the front and back of the brim to minimize damage to the crown and maintain better control of the hat when putting it on or taking it off. It also works best to put on and remove the hat in the direction of your hair. As most people seem to comb their hair backward and/or downward, it helps to almost back the hat on to your head, with the hat first making contact on your forehead and being adjusted into place as you pull the back of the hat down.

To remove the hat while minimizing its effect on your hair, work in reverse. This time (while holding the brim in the front and back) lift the hat off your forehead and gently pull it off backward until your head and hair are clear.

It might take a little practice (and shorter haircuts often help), but you’ll soon be able to don and remove a hat without any (or much) impact on your hair.

As we move forward on this segment, we might offer greater details about more difficult challenges, but for now we’ll stick to the basics.

DUST.

No matter how many filters they put in our cars, offices and homes, we just can’t avoid it. Your hat is bound to get dusty at some point.

The good news is, dust is fairly easy to remove from most any kind of felt hat.

HAT CLEANING RULE #1
Never, never, never use water or other liquids to clean your hat.

To clean the dust and loose dirt from your hat, take a soft brush and gently stroke the hat from the left counter clockwise to the back and around again. Work slowly without a lot of pressure. Repeat until you are satisfied.

If you do not have a soft hat brush, then you can use a lint roller or tape that isn’t too sticky. Be mindful of the grain of the fur felt in your hat. Work the lint roller in the same direction to avoid causing any damage.

Prefer a hat brush, Hat’s Plus sells them for only $10 a piece. Please contact the store for more info.

Many of our dress hats and straw hats come with feathers, but not everybody likes feathers in their hats. Some people we’ve found really hate feathers in their hats: “I’m not a musketeer!”

Through the excellent construction of our hats, you might not guess that the feather is actually an accessory that is neither necessary nor permanently affixed to the hat. If you do not like the feather, it may be gently plucked from the hat band.

The same principle holds true for hat pins, too. Many Stetson, Dobbs and Capas hats come with branding pins in the dress band or bow band. Unlike a Nike Swoosh, these pins slide right out and are not necessary.

“Does this look too big on me?” or “Why is this so tall?” they ask.

The height of the hat is the result of two primary factors. The style of the hat is among the key reasons. The crease of the crown is also a significant factor.

Oils from your head or hair care products can damage the lining and fur felt of a hat’s crown over time. So the crown of your hat needs to be high enough to keep from being damaged. Pork pie hats and bowlers have flat or gently rounded tops and are generally shorter crowns because they don’t need as much space to avoid touching your head. Fedoras and homburgs with a creased crown  have to rise up slightly higher to keep the crease from being too deep and touching your head.

So if you are new to hats, remember that the crown’s height serves a practical purpose and that it really isn’t as big as you might think. Then kick back and recognize how good you look with a hat.

You will never go wrong following these generally accepted principles of hat wearing. First you will need to make sure your hat fits properly. A men’s dress hat should rest about a finger’s width above your ears and eyebrows.

While checking in the mirror, you’ll want the hat to be centered on your head, with the brim perpendicular to your nose or parallel to your eyebrows. You will also want the brim of the hat to dip no farther down than your eyebrows. This way the hat won’t obscure your vision.

That said, a lot of movie stars and jazzmen make a fedora look awfully dashing by cocking it to one side. Other people like to wear their fedoras higher up and back, exposing their forehead. Some prefer it dipped low over one or both eyes.

And then there is the advice an old Chicago bluesman once gave a friend of mine that went something like this as he observed someone at the blues club wearing their fedora cocked back high on their head: “Only hayseed rubes from the country wear their hats up high like that. Real city cats wear them down a little over their eyes.”

The bluesman proceeded to adjust the guy’s hat for him.

The key is all in the straw. A true Panama hat is made of straw that is hand woven in Ecuador. A genuine Panama will be stamped on the inside of the crown to indicate it was woven in Ecuador. However, as these stamps are sometimes difficult to read, you also can tell a Panama hat by the weave of the crown. While other hats might be woven this way, too, a genuine Panama’s weave always starts at the center of the crown and works its way out in a circular pattern.

Wait a second, why are these hats called Panamas when they are woven in Ecuador?

To get the answer, you must go back more than a century. These light-weight hats that provide both a little shade and ventilation were very popular with the men who dug and built the Panama Canal. Ecuadorian natives nearby would weave and sell the men these hats. These hats were so popular that the men began bringing them back to the United States…and thus began a new summertime fashion craze.

Check out our wide selection of Panama hats at Hats Plus.