Shopping for Panama Hats (Part 1)

Cuenca is one of two cities in Ecuador famous for making and selling Panama hats.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Panama hats got the name when they became a very popular export item in the late 19th century and were shipped to world markets from Panama. The name stuck. It's more than a century too late to change it now.

There are Panama hats for sale all over Cuenca, but for the best ones you need to go to one of a handful of reputable companies such as Rafael Paredes and Sons which is just a ten minute walk down the Calle Larga from our hostal.

A nice young woman spent a half hour showing us how the hats are made.

It starts with the toquilla straw that is grown west of here in the warmer lowlands closer to the Pacific.

Weavers in the lowlands weave a rough version of the hat that comes to Cuenca and is finished by Paredes and Sons.

We saw that finishing process taking place. The photo above shows the stages in the weaving of a hat from right to left starting from the long strands of toquilla straw.

It looks like the most difficult thing in the world to turn a handful of straw into a tightly woven hat. It's very time consuming. An inexpensive hat using wider strands of straw might take a week.

A "fino" hat using thinner strands might take months.