Felt Hood Production

Pachacuti works with a felt hat making workshop in northern Ecuador. In a village which had over 30 hat making workshops in the early 1990s, now only half a dozen remain. This is principally due to the decline in wearing of traditional dress which has meant that they have lost their local market and Pachacuti's work in designing new styles of hat is therefore vitally important for the survival of the workshop with whom we work. In addition to producing for Pachacuti, we also do private label work producing felt hats for companies such as Brora. As well as designing new styles, we also rework the classic felt hats such as the Bowler, the Trilby and the Fedora.

In addition to ensuring that our production process complies with Fair Trade standards, we have undertaken to ensure that our raw materials are produced in as ethical a manner as possible. We were therefore really pleased to have a full tour of the felt-making factory which produces the 'hoods' which are then made into hats by our Fair Trade producers.

The Health & Safety and environmental standards were extremely high, all water was being put through a filtration system and the workers all made far more than the minimum wage. Any leftover wool from the felting process is recycled and given to artisan upholstery workshops to use for padding chairs.

It was fascinating to watch the production of the hoods from the raw sheep's wool as a lot of the machinery used is over 70 years old and the process has changed very little over the years.