Behind the Scenes in Italy: Designing Our Next Italian Hat Collection

For Cappello Fashion Company, Made in Italy is more than a label. It's about the people, materials, traditions, and craftsmanship behind the products we offer.

That's why we travel to Italy ourselves.

On our latest trip, we met directly with Italian hat makers, leather manufacturers, and fabric suppliers to discover new materials, develop upcoming collections, and strengthen the relationships we've built with our manufacturing partners.

Starting in Milan

Our journey began in Milan, where we attended an international fashion and leather goods trade show to explore new materials, accessories, Italian leather goods, and emerging ideas in European fashion.

Trade shows give us an opportunity to see what's new, but we're not interested in simply following trends. We look for materials, designs, and European caps and hats that reflect what Cappello stands for: timeless style, authentic Italian craftsmanship, premium materials, and quality over quantity.

Visiting Italian Hat Makers

From Milan, we continued traveling through Italy to meet directly with Italian hat manufacturers and explore new possibilities for our collections.

Meeting manufacturers in person gives us something emails, photographs, and catalogs can't. We can feel the fabrics, examine construction, compare colors, discuss fit, and work through the small details that ultimately determine the quality of a finished hat.

Whether we're developing Italian newsboy caps, flat caps, pork pie hats, or other classic European cap styles, seeing the materials and craftsmanship firsthand makes a difference.

Designing, Not Just Buying

One of the most important parts of our trip was working on future collections.

We don't simply choose finished hats from a catalog. We work directly with our Italian manufacturing partners to develop designs and collections specifically for our customers.

That means making decisions about fabrics, colors, patterns, crown shapes, brims, linings, construction, and fit.

Sometimes a new design begins with an idea. Other times, we discover an exceptional fabric and start imagining the hat we can create from it.

This hands-on process has become one of our favorite parts of building Cappello Fashion Company and developing our OLIMACI & Co. brand.

Finding the Right Materials

The right material can completely transform a hat.

For fall and winter, we look for premium wool, Shetland wool, and distinctive European fabrics that provide warmth, texture, and character. For spring and summer, we focus on breathable materials such as Italian linen and cotton.

Seeing these fabrics in person allows us to evaluate qualities that photographs simply can't capture—the weight, texture, weave, color, and how the material will behave once it's made into a hat.

The same applies to leather. During this trip, we also met with Italian leather manufacturers to explore materials and designs for our growing collection of Italian leather goods.

Small Batches, Better Products

Cappello Fashion Company isn't trying to offer thousands of products.

Many of our Italian hats and European caps are produced in small batches, and some fabrics are available only in limited quantities. Once a particular material is gone, that exact hat may never be produced again.

We like it that way.

It allows us to continually introduce new fabrics, colors, and designs while keeping our collections distinctive.

Our philosophy remains simple:

Quality over quantity.

The People Behind Our Products

Perhaps the most important part of these trips is building relationships.

Sitting down with manufacturers, walking through workshops, looking through fabric books, examining samples, and discussing new ideas gives us a connection to our products that we couldn't have by simply ordering from a catalog.

We know many of the people who manufacture the Italian hats and leather goods we offer, and we want our customers to understand the craftsmanship and relationships behind the products they purchase.

What's Coming Next

We returned from Italy with new fabrics, new designs, stronger relationships, and plenty of ideas for what's next.

Some of those ideas will eventually become new Italian newsboy hats, flat caps, pork pie hats, and other classic European cap styles available through Cappello Fashion Company.

We'll continue searching for exceptional materials, working directly with our Italian manufacturing partners, and developing distinctive new designs for OLIMACI & Co., Cappello Fashion Company's own brand.

Made in Italy. Small batches. Timeless craftsmanship. Quality over quantity.