Club Obi Wan

Sorry Rick, but I'm gonna have to keep this one.

As soon as I put my hands on it, I knew it was a keeper, but I couldn't resist converting it to a fedora either. The crown height (6" unbashed 5"-5.5" creased) and brim length (2.75" all around) just seemed too perfect for a conversion, considering most homburgs seem to be a little stingier with their dimensions. Also, the hat even fit me perfectly to boot.

Here's what it looked like before.




I didn't really do that much to it actually. A little bit of ironing and steaming to make it a little more flexible (The Fedora Lounge folks are gonna kill me). In fact, the pictures from above are post modification.

Here's the after shots.






See, I'm not that crazy am I. It really just looks like a really nice fedora.




I didn't use any steam on the crown, just did a really loose cold bash. I think it works better than a Raiders bash in this case. However though, I did do a slight turn just to give it a little more flavor with the brim.

The 43 mm ribbon makes the crown seem a little shorter than it really is, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm still clueless as to what the company Emerson is or when this hat was made. The sender stuck some newprint from '62 in there, but I don't know if it has anything to do with when it was made. There seems to be a complete lack of info on the net about the company or where the hat was bought from (The Young Men's Shop in Portage-Ebensburg, PA). There's also a trademark for something called Cravanette. Another clue is that everything is hand stitched with no trace of glue.

Wow, that is a very nice Emerson Fedora :!: :!:
The ribbon is great, no problem with that

Marcus, you did a great job on that hat! I'd keep it, too. Looking at the before pics, the roll of the brim isn't totally what I'm used to seeing with a homburg, so snapping the brim down hasn't done any harm to the hat. In fact, it looked so relaxed in your before picture that snapping the brim down helped bring it back to life. (Keep in mind I'm accustomed to homburgs with a very stiff pencil curl brim, not loose and relaxed like yours.) You wear it well, my friend!

The curl was a tighter originally, but I did mitigate some of that, but nonetheless the hat didn't really scream homburg to me in the first place. It looked like a fedora that thought it might be a homburg. Right out of the box I was still able to snap it down with little effort though. It didn't have the really tight curl that curled inwards like most homburgs. The brim and crown height seem large for a homburg, especially the brim though. I tried wearing it out of the box with just a crease, but it didn't really look like a homburg even then.

Well, I like how it looks now. In fact, it looks better now and keeps all of it's vintage glory nicely intact. You sure you don't want to give it to me?