Hutmacherkunst: Pure head thing

"I just do not have a hat face." Matthias Lueb hears this sentence at least ten times a week. And almost every time, the 37-year-old proves the doubters the opposite. "Everybody has a hat face - you just have to find the right headgear", Lueb is convinced. Mostly a look at said head and a sure grip on one of the shelves of his business on the edge of the Bielefeld old town is enough to conjure a surprised smile in the just yet skeptical face. Even Lueb himself is still happy when he is right with his flair.

The Hatter - under this name, his business is known five years after its opening customers from Bayreuth to Fehmarn. Fedora hats and melons, basque and flat caps, fascinator and hand-woven Panama hats: Lueb sells everything you need to carry on your head in his bright, retro and Scandi-style store and repairs old heirlooms. The tall founder and CEO with tattooed arms and nose ring not only named his shop after the traditional craft, he is a trained hatter.

Katharina Pfannkuch

Hatter Matthias Lueb

Quite correctly, his job title is Modist, Lueb explains: "In the past, we made a distinction between hat-makers, plasterers and cap makers." The hatters pulled the felt over the wooden molds, the cap makers sewed the caps and the plasterers finally sewed the food ribbons and provided the hats with trimmings. Today, all these tasks fall under the work of the modist, a slowly dying profession: in 2016, according to the Federal Institute for Vocational Training, there were still 36 apprentices in Germany.

The traditional craftsmanship certainly has glamor potential: Coco Chanel was a hat designer before she revolutionized the fashion world. Bill Cunningham, the inventor of streetstyle photography, provided New York's fashion and art scene as a hatter with extravagant headgear, before tirelessly documenting real-life looks for The New York Times. And Philip Treacy, arguably the most famous hatter in the world, designs not only for Lady Gaga and Madonna, but also for royal heads, working with labels such as Valentino, Chanel, and Alexander McQueen.

Locksmith and hatter

It was not role models like these who attracted Matthias Lueb into the profession. He wanted to work with his hands, he says. So at the age of 16, he did an apprenticeship as a locksmith in his hometown Bocholt. After a short detour through the care of the elderly and nursing, a professional coach advised him to become a modist. "Many people are surprised and think that locksmiths and hatters are not compatible with each other," says Lueb with a smile: "I see it differently, for both professions you need an eye for shapes and a feeling for the materials you work with . "

Katharina Pfannkuch

Atelier by Matthias Lueb

In his workshop, which is separated from the rest of the shop by a wall with a window, are the materials from which he makes hats. A hat cap made of felted rabbit hair in rich green for example. Many hats are made of wool, models of hair fuzz are softer and at the same time more robust, according to Lueb. If it is certain which form a hat should have - for example a fedora or rather a bowler, also known as a melon - the felt is heated with steam up to 300 degrees, pulled over the appropriate wooden form and then provided with a brim and garnish.

A bordeaux red trilby is ready on the workshop bench. The hat is almost finished, only the set is missing, two wide bands in different shades of red, an idea of ​​Lueb. Unlike his famous colleague Philip Treacy, the hatter from Bielefeld would never call himself a designer: "I am a craftsman with a sense for colors and shapes."

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18 pictures

And he is a seller. A rather experienced after a total of twelve years as a modist and five years in his own business. There he also offers products of the company Mayser. After one of the most famous models of the Allgäu traditional brand, the black fedora, which Udo Lindenberg has been wearing for decades, this afternoon a customer asks for an old age. Even younger audiences are increasingly finding their way to Matthias Lueb. Some trends even surprise him: "Berets were extremely popular this year." And the melon, a classic men's hat, is popular with young women in particular. They wear the hat, which Patrick Macnee popularized in "With Umbrella, Charm and Melon", to tank top and denim jacket on the back of the head.

For about six years hats and caps are on the rise again. Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, Roger Cicero, who passed away in 2016, models like Gigi Hadid and Kaia Gerber: they all helped to bring about a once-in-a-lifetime comeback to what used to be a social stand and etiquette. From the stages and catwalks the way into the accessory corners of big fashion chains was not far. There are Panama hats and Elbsegler, Fedoras and Berets for a fraction of the prices a specialist shop has. But there is usually only the headgear, and no expertise for head size, material and color. It is just with hats and Co more important than ever to be able to advise customers, so Lueb. Some customers come to him four or five times before they decide. "There's also the fear of being disguised," he knows.

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9 pictures

Lueb knows the fine line between coolness and costuming. During his apprenticeship as a modiste in Witten he worked for the Düsseldorf and the New York Opera, today he occasionally makes headgear for the theater. Many modists do. The fact that the classic hat business, despite all trend awareness, does not have it easy shows the case of the Italian brand Borsalino, to whose fans Winston Churchill and Michael Jackson belonged. Last year Borsalino stumbled so much that a Swiss investor had to step in. Although Lindenberg supplier Mayser still sells hats successfully, the company generates the majority of its sales with other products. Foam is suitable not only as a hatchet, but also as a material for foot mats.

Matthias Lueb can still live on hats. Manufacturing, repair and sales are enough. Especially in summer, many customers come to his shop in search of a sunscreen. Its function as a "small umbrella", as Lueb calls it, lost its hat but with the spread of the automobile. And the in the fifties still incontrovertible proviso that one is fully dressed only with headgear brought at the latest John F. Kennedy in the fray, who had sworn in 1961 as the first US president at the top without. Even Matthias Lueb rarely uses his hat. Ironically, the hatter prefers caps and caps. He has around 30 - but only a hat, he admits with a laugh. Of course, this is not due to the lack of a hat-face. Everyone has that.