Panama has long been adored by elderly professional golfs, dumb love lovers and medium -sized pensioners. She is the unconditional queen of summer hats and, perhaps, the only standard of male style from Ecuador. In its modern form, Panama was the main element of the male wardrobe since the beginning of the 20th century, and in the golden age of the male style, in the 30-50s, it was indeed a key accessory of the stronger sex. Panama was adored by movie star, including Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper, heads of state, such as Winston Churchill and Harry Truman, as well as famous artists and musicians – Salvador Dali and Frank Sinatra. But this hat has a centuries -old story.
The Incas well knew how to not only sacrifice people, but also defend themselves from the heat – in the XIV century, it was they who were the first to wear hats, similar to Panama. From the scorching sun, their head was protected by the so -called sort of Tokilya made of palm leaves. As now, the leaves were divided into strands a little thicker of the threads and weaved them so tightly – up to 1200 weaves per square inch (2.5 cm2) – that the resulting headdress was made from flax.
Each hat is made manually – you can’t find two similar ones – and the bushes, who are less and less, go for one panam for several months, because they prefer to weave them in bright light and preferably on cloud days to better see all the fibers. Pans of the highest quality of the edge are woven into the fields, and the simpler fields are cleaned and stitched. When the hat is finished, it is repulsed – that the art itself – so that it is even and flexible, washed with rainwater, and arranged manually to return it to it, and cleaned it. As a rule, panamas of pale cream color, but sometimes for the sake of diversity, darker fibers are woven or the entire hat is whitened with sulfur from local volcanoes. The first Panamu, which we know her now, created Francisco Delgado at the beginning of the 18th century. And the best modern hats – for example, from the Hawaiian company “Brent Black” or the London “Locke and K0” (Lock & CO), selling headdresses since 1676, to this day is produced on Ecuador according to the Delgado method.
Locke became one of the first hat masters who glorified Panama in Europe. The greatest preference is given to classic wide-brimmed hats with a black ribbon, which are made by craftsmen-curls from the Ecuadorian provinces of Manabi and Guyas and the coastal city of Montecrinism.
From a formal point of view, Panama should be called an Ecuador hat, because in Panama she had never been done. But this headdress, thanks to the workers who built the Panamani Shipping Canal at the beginning of the 20th century, got its name, and at the same time. They wore panama to protect from the sun. Soon, the Ecuadorian regions of Asuay and Kanyar, the focus of hat production, established active export, and trees, from the leaves of which hats were made, even began to be called panamic palm trees. And royal patronage in England in the era when the style was determined by the royal persons, provided Panama with the status of the standard of a summer headdress.