There are about forty companies that produce hats of all shapes and materials that arrive in the luxurious shop windows, at the cinema, on TV. Here are the hats from the TV series “I Medici”.
Silvana Grevi: “They were made with straw nets and are real embroidered sculptures.”
Julia Roberts’ hat in “Pretty Woman” is one of the famous pieces on display at the Museo della Paglia di Signa. This is where the history of the Florentine straw hat began, an industrial revolution, thanks to the intuition of Domenico Michelacci who transformed wheat into high quality straw and the work of women, the trimmers, who wove straw. Straw braids and other raw materials now come from the East.
Giuseppe Grevi: “This is our straw, the straw of our tradition, the straw of Florence. This instead is a paper braid that we import from Taiwan, very resistant and versatile. We also have producers of braids, here in Florence, of different materials such as abaca, twine, viscose with which we can indulge ourselves more. Once it was made only with this (straw), now we can sew many types of materials. ”
The pandemic has left its mark on hat makers, but the recovery pushes production and the vision of the future.
Source and full video: RaiNews
