Fashion

The Irish hats loved by Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Britney Spears

Hanna Hats in Donegal, a family business founded in 1924, has a long line of fans

Deirdre McQuillan's face
Deirdre McQuillan
Sat Feb 19 2022 - 06:00

What do Matt Damon, Patrick Dempsey, Britney Spears, Brad Pitt, Brian O’Driscoll and Amy Huberman, and the late Jack Charlton have in common? They are counted among the many well-known fans of Hanna Hats in Donegal, the famous Irish headwear company whose long heritage of artisan craftsmanship dates back nearly a century to 1924, when it was founded by David Hanna.

Though the first hat was a tweed trilby (still in production), the company is probably best known for flat caps, a style originating in the 1600s to stimulate wool production. To this day flat caps have retained their popularity, favoured by everyone from Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius to Bono and David Beckham, with the enduring power to deliver warmth, water protection and instant cool.

The success of Peaky Blinders further highlighted this unshowy, classless item that flatters most face shapes, frames the eyes and suits both sexes. Flat cap fans of Hanna’s are good illustrations; customers on their website journal who post images wearing their hats with enthusiastic testimonials are from all over the world – Israel, Australia, the US, Poland, Russia and Germany.

Vintage flat cap in chunky black and white Donegal tweed €90. Photograph: Eilish McCormick

Eight piece newsboy cap in charcoal and navy Donegal tweed €90. Photograph: Eilish McCormick

Baseball cap in navy cotton velvet €90 and baseball cap in Black Watch Harris tweed and black wool peak €90. Photograph: Eilish McCormick

The latest collection designed by Patricia McDyer, who worked with Magee for 13 years before moving to Hanna Hats eight months ago, is more luxurious, with a range of flat caps, newsboy hats and “infinity” scarves that can be made in more than 50 tweeds and linens as well as velvet.

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No two of the familiar caps composed of patchwork squares, (the squares made up in “blankets” by home workers), will ever be the same “as two similar squares of tweed must never touch”, explains Tony Gallagher. He is a long-standing chief pattern cutter (and part time sheep farmer) who can handle 80 tonne dye presses (that cut out shapes from the patterns), straight knife cutters and hydraulic hat-blocking machines with equal ease in the workshop.

As well as real patchwork which can include assemblies of blues and greys or other combinations in linen or tweed, the new styles also include fabrics that look like patchwork. Fabrics are sourced from mills in Ireland, Scotland and the UK in varying weights.

Donegal touring flat cap in tweed patchword €80, Donegal tweed tie €60. Photograph: Eilish McCormick

Third generation Eleanor Hanna and her brother John Patrick carry on the family business started by their grandfather, which employs more than 20 people. “I came into the workshop at 16 as my father wanted me to learn how to make hats and having worked as a machinist for two years, I know what our possibilities are,” says Eleanor. She accompanied her father, John Joseph who died in 2019, on buying trips to trade shows in Dublin, the US and elsewhere. Recent collaborations include making a waxed hat for the BBC, a tweed hat for the Sherlock Holmes series, Notre Dame College in the US and a new cap for Jameson Distillery.

The showroom in Donegal will soon be expanded to facilitate tour groups and visitors to the Wild Atlantic Way wishing to see where the hats are made. A guide to how to measure your head for a cap or hat is included on the website, the sweat band determining the size though in the words of the late John Joseph "it's not the size of the hat that fits the head, it's the size of the head that fits the hat". Prices €70-€90. hannahats.com

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