The BORSALINO BROTHERHOOD

Jeonsah said:

This belonged to my great grandfather. I believe he bought it when he returned to Rome to visit family in the late 40s or early 50s.

I’d like to have it cleaned up, not restored but I don’t have a clue on who to trust with it or what questions I should ask. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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belfastboy said:

It would help if you were more specific in what you want. I assume the hat fits, the leather sweat band is in good shape, the liner is clean/not stained. Is that accurate? Then you just want the hat steamed, brushed, and a sharper creasing put in the crown? Is that accurate? Where do you live? It will cost approx $25 to ship each way if you don't have a hat maker nearby. And if my description above is accurate another $50 - $75 to do the work.

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Jeonsah said:

The liner is slightly stained and torn but original to the hat so I’d prefer to keep that in think. I’m just learning about all this so I’m not sure. Probably just cleaned and reshaped.

The only places I could find in my area seem like retail cowboy hat stores. I actually reached out to Borsalino to see what it will cost for them to take care of it.

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Jeonsah said:

I actually reached out to Borsalino to see what it will cost for them to take care of it.

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Rmccamey said:

I picked up this beautiful milk chocolate Borsalino homburg from another TFL member (thanks, Ken). The felt is very soft and crushable - definitely vintage! A 5 inch crown, as creased, a 2 1/4 inch curled and bound brim, and a 1 1/2 inch matching ribbon. The brim curl is not a D'Orsay, but with a nice sharp fold, it's not far off.

Superior quality? Hardly. Extra Superior? That's so last year, don't you think? This hat is an Extra Extra Superior quality! Wow, could this be the first 1000X Borso

One of our resident Borsalino historians, Stefan @steur tells me this is a fairly common Borso model in the `36 - '53 period.

I know I'll enjoy this one for many years to come.

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jeffgarf said:

Having returned to the office, I am spending my non-work time sorting through some of the hats that have come in while I was away. This one stood out to me as something new.

It is an Ardilla line, usually long-haired and short brimmed, of which this is neither. My other Ardilla, as well as the ones shown here previously, all seemed to meet those characteristics.

Additionally, the model is Arpasti 38 in the color, opale (an easy one to translate) with a 7cm brim. The other Arpasti 38 shown here (by @Pellie ) is a nutria in black with a short brim. Not sure if anything is to be learned here other than that Borsalino remains unpredictable.

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Pellie said:

Very nice Borsalino Randy.

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Pellie said:

I told you
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Rmccamey said:

I picked up this beautiful milk chocolate Borsalino homburg from another TFL member (thanks, Ken). The felt is very soft and crushable - definitely vintage! A 5 inch crown, as creased, a 2 1/4 inch curled and bound brim, and a 1 1/2 inch matching ribbon. The brim curl is not a D'Orsay, but with a nice sharp fold, it's not far off.

Superior quality? Hardly. Extra Superior? That's so last year, don't you think? This hat is an Extra Extra Superior quality! Wow, could this be the first 1000X Borso

One of our resident Borsalino historians, Stefan @steur tells me this is a fairly common Borso model in the `36 - '53 period.

I know I'll enjoy this one for many years to come.

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Blare said:

Great addition, Randy.

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Rmccamey said:

I picked up this beautiful milk chocolate Borsalino homburg from another TFL member (thanks, Ken). The felt is very soft and crushable - definitely vintage! A 5 inch crown, as creased, a 2 1/4 inch curled and bound brim, and a 1 1/2 inch matching ribbon. The brim curl is not a D'Orsay, but with a nice sharp fold, it's not far off.

Superior quality? Hardly. Extra Superior? That's so last year, don't you think? This hat is an Extra Extra Superior quality! Wow, could this be the first 1000X Borso

One of our resident Borsalino historians, Stefan @steur tells me this is a fairly common Borso model in the `36 - '53 period.

I know I'll enjoy this one for many years to come.

View attachment 792144 View attachment 792145 View attachment 792146 View attachment 792147 View attachment 792148 View attachment 792149 View attachment 792150 View attachment 792151 View attachment 792152

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jeffgarf said:

Having returned to the office, I am spending my non-work time sorting through some of the hats that have come in while I was away. This one stood out to me as something new.

It is an Ardilla line, usually long-haired and short brimmed, of which this is neither. My other Ardilla, as well as the ones shown here previously, all seemed to meet those characteristics.

Additionally, the model is Arpasti 38 in the color, opale (an easy one to translate) with a 7cm brim. The other Arpasti 38 shown here (by @Pellie ) is a nutria in black with a short brim. Not sure if anything is to be learned here other than that Borsalino remains unpredictable.

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steur said:

It was a succesful model for a reason: it's a beautiful hat! Very nice, Randy!

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Daniele Tanto said:

Jeff, the color is Porfido. A type of stone

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steur said:

Page 500 of the Borsalino Brotherhood and on the threshold of the new year, it is a good moment for an update of the Borsalino database. A good bit has been added since last time and the new colours and models keep appearing.

Let's start with the colours. At the moment we're at a staggering 249 colours, not counting the unseen colours as seen on the second image. Almost all of the colours from the 1912 catalog we have not seen either. Becasue of the pages that were missing from that catalog we know that there were even more.

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The green marked colours in the "colours unseen" columns have been seen, but only as ribbon colours. It seems likely that these do not appear as felt colours, because thus far none have been found.

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Over to the models of which there are at the moment 176 with names. It is safe to assume that there were (hopefully are) many more of these as well. Quite likely all of the models in the 1912 catalog were named and there were hundreds in there.

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Finally the felt types and quality designations. Not much has changed there. Same goes for the dating method based on the label type. All of the dated examples found so far fit within this method. Understandably the owners of the earlier hats are reluctant to mess with the sweatbands of those hats to add to the known information. New information is always more than welcome of course. View attachment 668503

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