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At the Kentucky Derby it's as much about the hats
as it is about the horses.
A lucky thing for Walter Pieper.
His company, Panador Hats, has been tapped to cover the heads of the most
fashionable derby goers this year.
Here's the Limited Edition...
There's the Kentucky Derby label.
A special honor that takes a special kind of hat.
Panama hats are hand woven by skilled artisans using toquilla straw found only
in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in Ecuador
Pieper's been doing business with the weavers in the picturesque town of
Cuenca for eleven years but they've been weaving the stylish summer hats for
centuries. The Panama was Napoleon's favorite hat.
It goes back that far. Winston Churchill and
Theodore Roosevelt, when they did all their fancy cigar stuff,
the Panama hat was their hat of choice. And it's known as
the Prince of Hats. And a star in old Hollywood with cameos in classic films
like
Gone with the Wind, Casa Blanca and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Pieper prefers the white fedora, too, but the hats don't stop at one style. This
is a $225 hat.
The high-class Montecristi has a feathered flair
while the black fedora makes a strong statement. Now here's something
you haven't seen before. Pieper said this is the first pink Panama hat ever
created, and it has a big role in the races this derby weekend
at Friday's Kentucky Oaks race
where the ladies step out in pink for breast cancer awareness. It's a cause
close to Pieper's heart. Sixteen years ago he was diagnosed with stage four
colorectal cancer. The survival rate from that is
probably less than one percent
and yet here I am sixteen years later.
Fully recovered and running a successful business.
Ultimately we could probably sell 25,000 hats annually
easily
and we are selling
several thousand hats a year now. Almost all of it online.
That means Pieper can sit back with his laptop,
light a cigar and conduct international business from his back porch. It's that
same laid back attitude, effortless cool, that Pieper says is making the Panama
hat popular again. I think you can do something with an outfit,
man or woman,
with a hat that you really can't do with any other item and you can sort of do
something that
lets you dress up with attitude. A perfect accessory then
for the derby. It's an American excuse
to do some partying.
When we party we like to step out in something that's a bit different
or a bit more daring. Something like this
that's anything but old hat.