Going retro: the art of hatmaking

San Francisco may not be known for its fashion, but it’s certainly a fashionable city – the item of the day might be a bulky scarf or skinny jeans, but in the first half of the 20th century and earlier, San Franciscans were really into hats. Streets were often a sea of hats: rounded bowlers and their flatter cousins, the porkpies, creased fedoras, tall top hats, wide-brimmed ladies’ hats ornamented with flowers and birds. Today, though, the hat’s popularity is a shadow of what it once. And local hatters and milliners that once ran thriving businesses from their trade have all but disappeared. If you do see hats milling about town these days, most likely they’re mass-produced in factories overseas. But there’s at least one place where the local hat-making tradition goes on – behind a nearly 100-year-old storefront in the Richmond District. KALW’s Ali Budner visited Paul’s Hat Works, an old-fashioned men’s hat shop, to meet the four young women who have taken up this almost forgotten trade.