Since 1978, Hats in the Belfry has been devoted to bringing a fine and exclusive product to its customers and building valued relationships, not just with our customers, but also with the storied and expert companies that produce our product. A little more than ten years ago we realized that the best way to do that would be through a collaboration with some of the most legendary and reputable men’s hat makers in the business. In time, the Handmade for Belfry collection was born, an exclusive collection made by some of our greatest friends and partners.

In order to bring a unique product to our customers, we collaborated with four of the world’s finest producers of mens fedora hats: Biltmore, Bollman, Stetson, and Korber. We had already worked with these companies for years, selling their product, when over a decade ago we approached Bollman and Korber about producing an exclusive line for Hats in the Belfry. Biltmore and Stetson soon followed, lending their legacy to the collection.

These companies bring their reputation to us with both the quality and the design of the fedora hats. No hat company becomes great without an excellent product, and Biltmore, Bollman, Stetson, and Korber, are no different. The Handmade for Belfry collection is an extension of the hat-making tradition, and while mens fur felt hats and panama straw hats feature prominently, the collection is made from other top-shelf materials such as hemp, paper, and raffia.

The quality of the construction doesn’t stop there, though. A fine textile is still just a fine textile, but it’s the master craftsmen of our Handmade for Belfry collection that make this collection special. Made to only the most exacting standards of quality and styled by hand, the Handmade collection’s men’s fedoras exemplifies and upholds hundreds of years of hat making tradition.

So why don’t we just sell fedora hats produced by Biltmore, Bollman, Stetson, and Korber, for resale? Why do we need to take the extra step to make the Handmade for Belfry collection? It has to do with our desire to provide a unique and exclusive hat experience, and we realized that what we needed to do in order to achieve that was to provide a men’s fedora hat and an experience that could only be found at Hats in the Belfry.

Through an in-depth, eighty step design process, we have partnered with our Handmade for Belfry designers to produce some of the finest dress and designer mens fedora hats for men that we could imagine. With a focus on unique designs, we have had custom hat combinations made by bringing spools of hat bands and hat wools brought out from the archives of Biltmore, Bollman, Stetson, and Kobor to either be reproduced or even to be used in the construction of our fedora hats.

The really unique part of our design process comes from the close collaboration between our designers and executive personnel and their counterparts with the Handmade for Belfry producers. We are part of the design process of every single Handmade for Belfry hat, our input integral to every step of the construction for our fur felt and straw hats.

This unique collection is made special not just by the exclusivity of the materials, the experience of the construction, and the uniqueness of the design, but also because all of the men’s fedora hats that we have produced in the Handmade for Belfry line are made as extremely limited edition runs. This is in part because of the materials we use, which are often antique or limited reproductions, but also because we want our hats to be as special and unique as the people who wear them.

What makes the Handmade for Belfry collection special is that it is a collaboration between what amounts to over four hundred years of experience between Biltmore, Bollman, Stetson, and Kober, and the innovative design team at Hats in the Belfry. The ingredients are top-shelf and exclusive materials provided by our experts, along with the expert millinery experience of all involved, and combined with our vision and design expertise. The result is the Handmade for Belfry collection, the culmination of our vision for you, made by our expert partners.