Pair this with how to clean a felt hat, felt vs straw, and brim shapes — or book a free hat fitting and bring the hat that's been living in your back seat.
Most hats don't get ruined being worn. They get ruined sitting somewhere — a hot truck, a chair back, the rear window shelf. Wear is what a good hat is built for. Storage is where people lose them.
We reshape hats at our hat bar in Fayetteville every week, and the damage is almost always the same handful of mistakes. Here's how to not make them.
The Short Version
Overnight: upside down on the crown, or on a hook. Not brim-down.
Never: hot truck, direct sun, direct heat to dry.
Wet: sweatband out, crown down, room temperature, patience.
Off-season or traveling: in a can, somewhere dry and dark.
Already misshapen: bring it to us before you try to fix it yourself.
Rule one: Set it on the Crown, not the brim
Turn it upside down and rest it on the crown.
The brim is the part of the hat that loses its shape the fastest. Set a hat brim-down on a table a few times, no worries. Do it every day for a month and the brim may go flat — usually unevenly, so one side sits lower than the other and you can't figure out why the hat suddenly looks wrong.
When set upside down on the crown, the weight rides on the stiffest part of the hat and the brim floats free. Counter, truck seat, restaurant booth — flip it over.
Better yet, get it off the surface entirely. A wall hook, a hat rack, or a proper stand keeps weight off both crown and brim.
The truck is where hats go to die
The back window shelf of a pickup in July is an oven.
Heat softens the stiffener that holds your hat's crease. Once it cools it sets again — in whatever shape it slumped into. Sunlight through the glass fades the color on one side at the same time, which is the damage you can't steam out.
When your hat gets wet
We tell people all the time, unless you're wearing a high 100X beaver, try not to use your hat as an umbrella during a Thunderstorm,...
But that being said..Rain happens.
Do this: flip the sweatband out, set the hat upside down on its crown, and let it dry at room temperature, out of the sun. Slow and boring is the whole method.
Don't do this: hair dryer, heater vent, dashboard, campfire, oven. Direct heat shrinks felt and can crack it. A hat that dries too fast comes back a size smaller and stays that way.
If it dried misshapen, don't fight it at home. Steam is the fix and steam is easy to overdo — bring it in and we'll set it back. Didn't buy it from us, no problem...We work on hats from anywhere.
Felt and straw store differently
Felt wants to be brushed. Gentle, consistent, front to back around the crown, and it sheds the dust that grinds fibers down over time. Store it somewhere dry — felt in a damp basement invites mildew and moths. Dust is the slow killer, and it settles on anything left out on a shelf, which is why a sealed A Better Hat Can does more for a felt hat over a season than any amount of brushing after the fact. For the real cleaning, see How to Clean a Felt Hat.
Straw is the more fragile of the two in storage, which surprises people. It's tough on your head and brittle on a shelf, especially through a dry winter when the weave loses moisture. Straw doesn't reshape the way felt does — a crushed straw hat is often just a crushed straw hat. If you're rotating a straw out for the season, that's exactly when it needs real protection, not a closet shelf with a coat thrown on top. Read up on the different straws if you're not sure what you own.
Long-term storage: the case for a hat can
A hat rack is for the hat you're wearing this week. For the hat that's off-season, traveling, or just valuable enough that you'd hate to explain what happened to it, you want a can.
A can solves four problems at once: dust, light, humidity swings, and getting sat on. That last one is not a joke — it's the single most common way a good hat ends its life.
We're the first retailer in Arkansas to carry A Better Hat Can, and we think it's the first real innovation in hat storage in a long time. Hat cans haven't changed much in decades — bulky, awkward to haul, and they don't stack, so they eat closet space fast. This one was built to fix all of that:
Stackable. Store a collection vertically instead of losing a shelf to every hat.
Three ways to carry. Top handle, shoulder strap, or backpack-style — which matters more than it sounds when you're walking a hat through an airport.
Transparent top. You can see which hat is in which can without opening six of them.
Fits a 5-inch brim. Wide brims are exactly the hats that don't fit standard cans, and exactly the hats you least want to crush.
Rubber feet. It stays put in a truck bed or a closet instead of sliding into a wall.
And we're honored to say it's made in America by our friends in Gainesville, Texas. Molded a few hours down the road by people who actually took the time to ask hat folks what was wrong with the old ones.
Come see one in person — the difference is obvious the second you pick it up.
We'll steam it back
If a hat you love has gone flat, warped, or sad in storage, bring it by. Steam and a little patience fix more than people expect, and there's no charge to have us look at it.
Come see us at 2218 N College Ave in Fayetteville, or book a free hat fitting. Bring the hat. We'll tell you honestly whether it's savable — and if it isn't, we'll help you find the next one.