Graham Thompson practices a dying art.
The founder and owner of Optimo, a Chicago-based artisan hat manufacturer, has always loved “Old World stuff,” he said, whether that’s classic movies, old cars or stogies.
It was this love that ultimately led him to his life’s work, reviving the lost art of fine hatmaking. Since he founded his business in 1996, Thompson has created chapeaus for a variety of musicians, artists, entrepreneurs and regular people who appreciate Optimo’s quality and craftsmanship.
Related Articles
Now Thompson’s journey will be chronicled in a book, aptly titled “Optimo: The Art of the Hatmaker,” by Danish publisher Forlaget Ehrhorn Hummerston, which is being released on April 24.
You May Also Like
In the foreword, Justin Hummerston and Morten Ehrhorn write that Thompson’s hats “are so intuitively beautiful, you instantly feel naked not wearing them — even though you have never worn a hat in your life.”
They describe Thompson’s “relentless ambitions of resurrecting a lost quality of hats. Many manufacturers stare into the future, looking for potential technologies to improve their product today. Graham’s glance is aimed at the past.” In fact, they contend, his hats have achieved such a level of quality that they can be on exhibition, like art.
Thompson’s path to hatmaking began when he was 16 and started scouring Chicago’s men’s stores for a fine hat like the ones he’d see in old movies or on the album covers of jazz and blues musicians.
“I wanted to get a real hat,” he said, “but I couldn’t find one.”
His quest led him to Johnny’s Hat Shop on the South Side, where he met Johnny Tyus, master hatter, and “his life would never be the same,” the book recounts.
Tyus primarily restored and renovated hats but also created custom hats for individuals as well as the movies, including Robert DeNiro’s Al Capone hat in “The Untouchables.”
Thompson was hooked.
When he got out of college with a degree in international finance and Japanese, he returned to Chicago and popped in to see Tyus. He was “stunned” to hear that the master hatter was retiring and closing the shop.
“This was not just a shop that was closing,” the book recalls, “it was a craft and art form that was on the edge of extinction.”
He talked Tyus into taking him on as an apprentice and he worked under the craftsman for seven years, learning the skills and intricacies of the trade He cut a deal to buy the business, complete with the tools and client book, and pay it off over time.
“Johnny was a wonderful mentor and taught me the fundamentals,” he said. “When you buy a business like that, you need someone to teach you.”
In 2015, Thompson opened his current workshop, buying a 7,700-square-foot firehouse that was being decommissioned from the city for $1. He hired Skidmore Owings & Merrill to renovate it and although it won a Design Excellence Award in 2018, Thompson said it is still a work in progress. “It was vacant for six years but was the right scale for a workshop,” he said. “We’ve been renovating it ever since.”
Optimo operates its sole retail store in the Monadnock building in Chicago’s Loop. where clients can stop in and see the latest collection or be fitted for a bespoke hat. For a custom hat, heads are carefully measured and kiln-dried timber is crafted into two separate molds that are then kept in the workshop for future orders.
Optimo manufactures some 2,500 to 3,000 hats a year at prices that average around $1,500. Although the workshop has the ability to take on more capacity, Thompson is cautious. “We would like to grow,” he said, but not at the risk of sacrificing quality. “We’re never going to be a big producer.”
Over the years, Thompson has established some “special relationships” with retail personalities, such as Wilkes Bashford, who was a client. Optimo made hats for him and his friends, but the hats weren’t sold in his San Francisco store. “We’re not set up to be a wholesaler.” But he didn’t rule out working with select stores “that share our philosophy,” he said. He’s having preliminary talks with at least one company where he would develop one specific model that could be sold in their stores.
That model may be the fedora, which represents some 80 percent of Optimo’s dress hat business. Or it could be a straw hat, a category that Thompson has been focusing on more of late. Western hats also have their fans.
“I don’t like stuff that looks like a costume,” he said, adding that most other hats are akin to clip-on ties. “They’re pre-shaped and pre-formed and lack elegance,” he said. “Part of the ritual of hat wearing is how you crease and shape it to reflect your personality.”
Anyone who buys the Optimo book — which retails for $150 and will be sold at the company’s Chicago headquarters — will get an education in the business of hatmaking. The book is not intended to promote the sale of hats, but instead to pay homage to the “passion, respect, craftsmanship and honoring of lost traditions.” There are chapters on craftsmanship, descriptions of the anatomy of a hat, tips for cleaning and servicing fine hats, how felt is obtained and processed — not a chapter for beaver or rabbit lovers — how the trim is applied and other technical processes of hatmaking.
There’s also a section on the Golden Age of hats, which was in the early part of the 20th century. It was 1914 when per capita hat sales peaked in the U.S., but when the automobile was introduced, people spent less time outdoors and more time driving around, reducing the need for hats to protect them from the elements. Thompson believes the greatest hats were created in the 1930s and ’40s when manufacturers competed on quality. But as sales declined, so did quality, with producers focusing more on price. It was this period when pre-shaped hats came into the market, which were cheaper and more disposable.
That’s something that will never happen at Optimo, even if Thompson is lured into expanding his business.
“We might grow two to three times larger, but we want to stay on principle,” he said. “We’ve spent 25 years in research and development and have built a wonderful clientele. We’re still under the radar, but we’re ready for more awareness of our brand.”