Not quite sure why this was in my reserve posts I keep for when I can't think of anything. I guess Jim was looking for a hat.
"Ah, Borsalino! The hat of hats, the headwear of stars! It's a name long familiar to gourmets of fine hats around the world, but today, is almost invisible in the USA. And these days, not everyone will jump at the chance to spend several hundred dollars on a fedora. Nonetheless, Borsalino has been an icon of the Italian fashion market for 160 years and has deep roots in the art, design, movie and theater worlds. Wide-brim Borsalinos are also standard apparel for many Orthodox Jews who consider head coverings a sign of peity. In short, the name is a magic one and well worth exploring. So here we go.
Not surprisingly, it was Guiseppe Borsalino who founded his eponymous firm on the streets of Alessandria, some 50 miles east of Turin. He was already a skilled hatmaker, and within a few decades, built a formidable business. By the 1880s, the firm was making 2,500 hats a day. In 1900, having won the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition Universelle, the company was launched into the stratosphere and by 1914 had grown more than three-fold. This was a time when headwear in England and America was a regular feature of the well-dressed man. For the next 35 years, a Borsalino hat was something to own."
