By David A. F. Sweet
On a winter Sunday, in the tower of a former fire station where hoses used to hang, Graham Thompson smokes a pipe below a photo of Compay Segundo, a renowned Cuban singer who’s wearing a hat. Down the stairs there’s a black-and-white picture of blues icon John Lee Hooker sitting backstage, bedecked in star-spangled socks with his arms crossed; he’s also donning a hat.
“I never get bored of this craft,” says hatmaker Graham Thompson. Photo by Justin Hummerston .
If a visitor were to venture to other parts of the building, in fact, he or she would find hundreds of hats. Not only that, in a workshop designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the visitor would come across long-ago equipment and tools – including irons, sewing machines and metal contraptions that look like they were created during the Industrial Revolution — that Thompson has purchased from defunct hat companies across the world.
Though custom hats such as fedoras were ubiquitous in the middle of the last century, creating headwear out of felt, straw and other material in the 21st century is a rare pursuit. Thompson, 53, along with four full-time and two part-time employees, continues the trade on Chicago’s South Side. The wares are sold at his store Optimo, just steps away from the Board of Trade building on Jackson Boulevard.
“The whole philosophy of fine craft has always intrigued me,” Thompson explained. “I always wanted to master a rare craft. Hatmaking presented a unique opportunity to resurrect a quality of hat which has essentially disappeared.
“In the old films, it wasn’t just the style of the hats; they were made with the attributes of good quality. Those hats absorbed their wearers’ personality.”
Watching black-and-white films with his father Tim – along with admiring jazz and blues album covers he grew up with — helped inspire the native of Chicago’s western suburbs to become a hatmaker. As a teenager, wanting “to look like one of these cool guys, like the blues musicians,” Thompson borrowed a car and headed to downtown Chicago to try one on (knowing he lacked the money to buy one).
“I went to fancy department stores. There was nothing,” he recalled.
Finally, at Neiman-Marcus, Thompson found fedoras on a hat tree. He was disappointed by their poor quality. A store manager understood his distress and handed him a business card for Johnny’s Hat Shop.
Thompson soon visited Johnny Tyus, a revered hatmaker at 79th and Racine on the South Side.
Fedoras are among Thompson’s favorite hats to wear and to make. Photo by Justin Hummerston.
“I look back now on walking into his shop that I felt something indescribable — I had stumbled into a whole culture of hats, a craft,” Thompson said. “Little did I know it would change my whole life.” Sometime later the novice began to work with Tyus, renovating hats. He saw high-quality hats that had been passed down from fathers and uncles.
“I was just entranced,” Thompson said. “I saw these old hats come in from the ‘30s and ‘40s. I said, ‘Who’s making these?’ He said no one. That became an obsession for me.”
Thompson then headed off to Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto to study Japanese and international finance. Upon returning, he visited his mentor and found Tyus was poised to close his shop and retire.
“I said, ‘This tradition is just going to go?’ He said he’d teach me. I began making hats with very basic tools.”
Thus began a seven-year apprenticeship with Tyus, who had fashioned Robert De Niro’s hat for The Untouchables. Thompson also talked to countless other hatmakers worldwide, some in their 90s. Then, he opened Optimo in a South Side storefront 30 years ago. Soon, he was almost forced to go hat in hand to anyone who could help him.
“I still look back and can’t believe we made it in business the first year,” he said. “I was so green. I was on the verge of bankruptcy.”
At 102nd and Western, the hat-making workshop and the store were in the same building.
“You’d come in, and people would hang out and watch you working,” said Thompson, who was working 15-hour days at the time and even pulled all-nighters. “We had cops in there buying hats next to drug dealers. We had everything from bums to billionaires. I remember one guy came in — kind of a crazy dude, and he said, ‘I want a hat that’s like the planet Saturn.’ I’d say, ‘He’s looking for a porkpie hat.’ You learn to translate the things people want.”
Thompson noted that the process of creating these signature hats changes every year. There are about 50 steps, including flexing a humidified piece of material such as felt and putting a wood or aluminum block in a budding hat. Custom orders take about three to six weeks. The cost of an Optimo hat usually begins at $1,500.
What spurs someone to contact Thompson?
“A lot of them are continuing a legacy – a grandfather, a father,” he said. “Or it’s a symbol of something they like culturally.
“They discover the utility of what we make. A well-made felt hat should be able to be worn in the rain and snow. If it got sat on, just pop it back into shape.”
Thompson pointed out that those in creative fields – writers, musicians, actors, artists– gravitate to Optimo. The bigger names include Eddie Vedder (“a real sweetheart of a guy”), Leonard Di Caprio and Johnny Depp. In the movie Road to Perdition, Tom Hanks and Daniel Craig wore Optimo hats.
Though it’s hard to pin down the exact number of custom hatmakers in the United States, only a handful can be considered notable names, such as Stetson. (The oldest hat shop in the world resides in London; Lock & Co. Hatters opened its doors in 1676.) Thompson’s work has inspired a coffee-table book, The Art of the Hatmaker. Created by the Danish firm Forlaget Einhorn Hummerston, the story – graced by professional photography — fills more than 300 pages. Information ranges from how to determine weave tightness (the finest exceed 2,000 weaves per square inch, the book notes) to the history of formal choices, such as the top hat. Thompson is pictured working in one of his favorite types of hats, a fedora with a modest brim.
The workshop on the South Side features long-ago equipment and tools that Thompson has purchased from defunct hat companies across the world. Photo by Tom Rossiter.
Expect this craftsman to keep making hats for decades to come.
“I never get bored of this craft. There’s always a new level to take it to,” Thompson said. “Our quality has surpassed the hats I’ve seen in the past. My goal is to have it the finest hat collection ever produced.”
Unsung Gems columnist David A. F. Sweet can be reached at dafsweet@aol.com.
