Where to Get the Perfect Statement Hat

NEW YORK — Near the back of JJ Hat Center, Van Huynh wrapped his hands around a mold of cream-colored felt and tipped it into pillows of steam. Huynh, the store’s in-house hatter, spends most of his days crammed between wooden blocks and weathered chain stitch machines, making, reshaping and repairing hats.

“I’m helping people paint a visual image of themselves,” said Huynh, 36, while standing in front of an actual painting of himself in an orange fedora. “If you have kids, you’re going to want a dad hat, something crushable. Your kids might throw up on it — the dog could eat it.”

For over a century, JJ Hat Center, at 310 Fifth Ave. and 32nd Street, has helped collectors and headwear neophytes alike with adding a little flourish to their personal styles. A typical scene in the old-fashioned-looking shop, with its glimmering chandeliers and yellowing posters of drivers in Borsalinos, has customers peering into the mirrors and occasionally grinning as they pull down the brims of homburgs or Open Road cowboy hats.

Others bring in their well-worn hats for repairs. Alex Alexander, 53, who has a collection of 200-plus off-the-shelf and custom fedoras, recently stopped by to check on the state of his light blue Stetson Royal, which he had brought in on a previous visit to have its leather sweatband replaced. He ended up putting in an additional request for a new ribbon.

“You can take the crown, change a little thing, and it’s a whole new look,” said Alexander, a guitarist who has been a customer for 25 years. Before leaving, he asked for a quote for a custom hat made of beaver fur as well as a burgundy fedora that Huynh was designing.

Hat wearers are harder to find on the streets today compared to 1911, when the store first opened, said Aida O’Toole, the current owner. Back then, men rarely left the house with bare heads. “Today, it’s a novelty,” O’Toole, 59, said.

Novelties can turn into trends though.

“You see all these girls wearing them at a bar, it’s like a hat-off,” said Nicola Smith, 45, who inspected Signes fedoras while her friend, Anahera Parata, 32, combed through beaded and cloth bands to wrap around her Hills hat.

Recently chains like Goorin Bros., which follow contemporary vintage-inspired styles, have popped up in Brooklyn and the West Village, and there is still the upscale 57th Street shop, Worth & Worth. But eventually, Huynh said, almost everyone winds up at JJ.

The store doubles as a living museum. A giant red “STETSON” sign, from the original store on Broadway, sits on the second floor, dark. There is still ceiling molding in the foyer featuring a time clock and computing scale from when IBM was the tenant in the 1920s.

The shop even has its own historian, Adam Coren, who wears prewar-era Coke-bottle glasses and 1930s ties, and curates vintage pieces for sale, like a 1960s cyclist cap and a Portis fedora from the ‘30s, which fill a small glass case near the workshop.

Coren, 28, keeps pictures of early 20th-century hat catalogs on his phone, and while helping customers with their purchases, he might fire off trivia like the traditional differences in flat caps and quality, or historical statistics of hat sales.

“I want people to leave here knowing more about hats than just their size and what looks good on them,” Coren said.

But customers looking for basic sun protection are welcome, too. Before leaving on a trip to southern Spain, Mitchell Barr, a chef, picked up a Capas bucket hat to avoid coming back sunburned.

“I never saw myself as a hat person,” Barr, 34, said. “I’m going to look like an Englishman.”