The straw hat that is known as the Panama Hat can thank the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca for its introduction to the world. I discovered this surprising fact when I visited the Museo del Sombrero here in Peekskill’s sister city in the Andes.
The paja toquilla tree grows in the Pacific coastal area of Ecuador and the people of that region had perfected the technique of harvesting the leaves of the tree, which is like what we know as a palm tree. Once the leaves are harvested, the fibers are separated from the green outer skin. They are then boiled to remove chlorophyll and dried for bleaching with sulfur over a wood fire. When cooled, they are ready to be separated into very long, fine threads. With the drying of the raw material and creating of thread, the labor-intensive process has just begun.
People from the highlands of the country, where Cuenca is located, went to the area of Guayaquil on the coast of Ecuador to learn the process of harvesting the leaves. They brought back the materials to this city and began weaving the hats using their artisan knowledge and techniques perfected over centuries of craftsmanship.
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A large papier mache Panama Hat displayed at the Museo del Sombrero, proudly showing off its origin of Cuenca. (Regina Clarkin)
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The labels are sewn into hats created at the Museo, along with other adornments such as colored bands. (Regina Clarkin)
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Exterior of the museum that not only tells the story of the hat but is a workshop and retail store where a visitor can see the process that was once done entirely by hand. (Regina Clarkin)
Depending on how thick or thin the fibers are, it could take months to weave a hat by hand. When the Spaniards colonized Ecuador, they saw the lightweight straw hats the Ecuadorians were wearing and began purchasing them.
The early 1900s were the beginning of the boom in production of the hats. With more and more people wanting them in Europe, the route to get them there was as long and arduous as the process to create them. It was businesspeople in Cuenca who financed the production and distribution of the hats to Europe. They were transported by mules or horses to the coast of Ecuador, where they were placed on ships that sailed to Panama and then transported across that country by horseback and mule and loaded on ships that sailed the Atlantic to Europe.
When the Panama Canal was being built by the United States between 1904 and 1914 and President Theodore Roosevelt paid a visit to the workers, he noticed people wearing the hats and dubbed them the Panama Hat, and to this day the world knows them as that. The lightweight chapeau can cost anywhere from $5 to $500, depending on the colors and how they are accessorized. If well maintained by their owners, the hats can last up to 25 years.
Today, the hats aren’t solely created by hand. The harvesting of the leaves is done manually. Italian machinery, assembled in Brazil, was added to the process in the 1960s.
At the museum I visited, I saw machines manufactured in Brazil and a demonstration of how the molds are used to form the threads into shapes. There is a separate area where a label band is sewn inside a hat and different colored bands are added.
At the top of the museum is a terrace where a visitor can drink a coffee and look out over the city and ponder how this small city in a valley of the Andes came to influence the fashion culture of the world.
