When He Talks Hats, Basic Black Is Only the Beginning

CROWN HEIGHTS — Bruno Lacorazza’s fur felt hats come in black, black or black.

But there the uniformity ends as Mr. Lacorazza, 47, Colombian-born hatter to the Lubavitch Hasidim and other Orthodox Jews who keep their heads covered, arrived in Brooklyn from Miami last week with cartons of exciting new styles retailing for about $125, along with the classics.

For Wolf Greenbaum of Feltly Hats in Williamsburg, Mr. Lacorazza pulled out a homburg, which is favored by many Hasidim — “pious ones,” in Hebrew. At first glance it looked like every other homburg, black and round. But Mr. Lacorazza had a surprise. “You see this finish?” he asked, running his hands over the fuzzy rabbit fur. It was, he announced, his new, more textured finish — “peach.”

Mr. Greenbaum was unmoved. But he liked Mr. Lacorazza’s next offering, a fedora with an asymmetrical “dimensional” brim. “But instead of three inches in the front and two and seven-eighths on the sides,” Mr. Lacorazza explained, “it’s two and three quarters on the sides!”

“This good, this leave,” Mr. Greenbaum conceded.

Mr. Lacorazza, in a white guayabera and one of his own black fedoras, wasn’t finished. “But you need to place me an order,” he said.

Black may be the new black (and the old black) in Crown Heights, Williamsburg and Borough Park. But if you thought that Hasidic hats all look the same — black brim, black crown, black band and bow — you would be wrong. Mirroring the subtle but significant differences among their Orthodox Jewish wearers, there are big differences in the hats when you know where to look, and last week Mr. Lacorazza, who visits New York a couple of times a year, pointed them out.

One of the nation’s largest suppliers of black hats to Jews, after Borsalino, Mr. Lacorazza, who was born in Bogotá, and is not Jewish, sells some 5,000 of the hats a year under his Puerto Fino and Barbisio labels, manufactured in the factory his father founded in Colombia. (He also sells felt bodies for cowboy hats.) His wife, Adriana Guzman, runs their hat store, called Hats and Hats, in North Miami Beach. Mr. Lacorazza is his own outside man, traveling to the hat dealers and some special customers, including the writer Gay Talese, who likes the Panama hats Mr. Lacorazza also makes. “I used to have a salesperson, but they pay more attention when the owner is here,” he said of the dealers.

Besides hats with the new peach finish and dimensional brims, he brought styles he called Argento, with a large crown and brim; Solo, with a lower crown and smaller brim; Dilusso, a compromise between the two; bar mitzvah hats scaled down for 13-year-old-heads; and tall “up hats” with slightly curled-up brims, preferred by many rabbis; and of course the ever-popular fedora with three dents in the crown — the “Lubavitch pinch” favored by the group’s late leader, the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and now by many of his followers.

The Lubavitchers shun the stylized hats, preferring the more generic fedoras in a style called Yeshivish. But for special occasions and the Sabbath, others don the shtreimel — a wide, round fur hat, costing into the thousands — which Mr. Lacorazza does not make.

He also does not make the boxy, furry hats in a plush velour that many call beaver but is actually rabbit, a style adopted by many of the other Hasidim and made by a firm called Tonak in the Czech Republic by a secret method that highlights the shine of the skin.

Mr. Lacorazza began his rounds Tuesday with a visit to the shop that gave him his first orders when he started out in 1988, Bencraft Hatters at 236 Broadway in Williamsburg.

“I came to say hello, show a new hat with a new finish,” he told the owner, Stanley Goldstein, 77, who started selling hats in 1948.

Heads are getting bigger, Mr. Lacorazza observed. They talked brims for a while. “Ten years ago, it was two and a half inches,” Mr. Lacorazza said. “Now it’s two and a half to four.” That meant the crowns had to be proportionately higher as well.

Leaving the shop, Mr. Lacorazza was intercepted near his rented Jeep by a neighboring hat dealer, Moshe Friedman, who seemed interested in doing business. Mr. Lacorazza knew his boss. “I’m going to tell him I saw you,” he said.

Mr. Friedman stopped short. “Don’t tell him anything,” he said.

Religious Jews keep their heads covered as a sign of respect for God, but the headgear varies by tradition. Many of the hat styles go back centuries to the various Hasidic courts, or branches, in Poland, Hungary, Romania and elsewhere. Observant Jews wear the skullcap even under other hats.

Black is not mandated for clothing, although dark, conservative colors are customary, but more colorful garments, particularly for women, are common for the Sabbath and festivals.

At Feltly Hats, at 185 Hewes Street, Mr. Greenbaum gave Mr. Lacorazza a big hug. “Bruno is No. 1,” he said. “There never was such a person.”

“You need to place a good order,” Mr. Lacorazza said. He revealed the secret behind his new style. Instead of “pouncing,” or sanding, the skin flat with sharkskin, he explained, “I pick up the hair, so it’s like a peach, between velour and suede.”

Mr. Greenbaum was noncommittal. “So we’re going to sit down,” he said. Later, he ordered 12 dozen of the new dimensional fedoras, to sell for about $100.

At Mr. Lacorazza’s next stop, Primo Hatters, at 366 Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights, Shlomie Rotter asked for samples of two new fedoras before placing an order, probably 300 to 400. He also said he was considering the new peach homburgs. He praised Mr. Lacorazza’s hats. “They’re sturdy, they last,” he said. “No blemishes, no elephant skin.”

Mr. Lacorazza, Mr. Rotter and Mr. Rotter’s father, Sol, were talking business when the door flew open. “I’m coming in tomorrow for a hat!” shouted Mendel Schachter, 25, a rabbinical student.

He had just gotten engaged, Mr. Schachter announced, introducing his fiancée, Chaya Rochel Kershner, 23, a pharmacy technician. His family was flying in from Melbourne and he invited everyone to the engagement party the following night at the Jewish Children’s Museum.

The couple started to go. “I thought you want a hat,” Sol Rotter said.

“I’m going to come in tomorrow,” Mr. Schachter promised.

Business was good, the elder Mr. Rotter said. A Lubavitcher, he said, might “go through three hats a year.” And families tended to be large, ensuring future customers.

“People always use hats,” he said. “It’s a necessity, like food.”