Panama Hat

A panama hat is woven by hand from toquilla straw, a fiber stripped from a palm-like plant grown on the coast of Ecuador. The name is a misnomer that stuck: traders shipped the hats north through the Isthmus of Panama, and workers photographed at the Panama Canal made the misnamed hat famous worldwide.

Weave fineness sets the grade, and grade decides how the hat behaves. A coarse weave takes a skilled weaver days to finish, with straw split into strands wide enough to see across a room. A fine weave can take months, with straw split thin enough to feel like thread and so many rows per inch that the crown looks almost smooth. Only that finest grade rolls into a loose coil and passes through a ring without damage, which is where the packable myth comes from. A coarser hat rolled the same way creases along a line it never loses.

Two crown shapes cover most panama hats. The optimo rises to a smooth ridge with rounded, telescoping sides and no pinch in it, while the second option borrows the fedora crown crease, a center dent with two pinches at the front, so a panama can carry a fedora's silhouette in warm weather straw. Brim width tracks the sun hat more than the fedora: a trim two inch brim reads dressy, while a brim past four inches shades the ears and neck the way a wide sun hat does. A bucket hat, sewn from cloth and stiffened only by stitching, folds flat in a way a panama's straw does not.

Warm climates and dressed-up summer wear are where a panama earns its keep, since nothing else shades a face in a fedora silhouette without the weight of felt. Cold or wet climates suit it least, since straw blocks no wind and holds no heat. Anyone buying a hat to survive a suitcase should pay for the finest grade available, because a mid grade panama packed for travel usually comes home creased. Humid heat is the honest weakness: toquilla straw softens in damp air, and a balled up hat can take days to spring back into shape.

Size a panama the way you size any blocked hat: measure your head a finger's width above the ears, read the number in inches or centimeters, and buy that size, since blocked straw will not stretch to cover a miss. Keep it out of direct sun for long stretches, which dries and yellows the fiber, and store it crown down on a stand.