We recently connected with Meg Patti and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Meg thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’ve always had this pull toward creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit. As a kid, and even still, I was a very imaginative thinker. I grew up creating imaginary worlds for myself to exist in. I didn’t watch much tv and wasn’t allowed to play video games. My parents encouraged a ton of independent play. For example I remember using clay to build elaborate cities with winding roads and driving my Micro Machines (tiny toy cars) all thru these cities, stopping at the car wash and going through tunnels and over bridges, crafting whole narratives for the pretend drivers of these cars. Anyway, as I got older, and the time came for me to go to college, I chose to get a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies with an emphasis in design and production. Fast forward to after college, I worked for an artist out on Peak’s Island, Maine, and took note of how every day felt like a blank canvas. Much of my work days with this artist felt like erroneous adventures, and to be sure, some were, haha, but there was always a nugget of inspiration within those adventures. We’d get back to the studio and the artist would create something magical. As time went on I felt myself learning that I loved the feeling of having a finished product that represented my efforts and would carry on in the world independent of my existence. I guess that’s a long way of saying, I think from the time I understood what a profession was, I knew I wanted the opportunity to be creative in mine.

Meg, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I used to work for a Fortune 20 company in leadership development. But, truthfully, the corporate environment was soul-sucking for me. I wanted the opportunity to define my own success on my own terms based on what feels meaningful and true to me. I have always loved and worn different kinds of hats, but in October of 2016, my wife, Anna, and I took our honeymoon in Italy. We started our adventure in Patti, Sicily (because that’s where “my people” are from and is our last name), then spent time in Naples, Salerno, Atrani, Amalfi and ended in Rome. In Rome, we popped into a little hat shop and the shop owner helped me pick a really neat pork pie style hat. There was a language barrier so this was done pretty non-verbally and the whole thing was just so beautiful to me. We walked out of that shop and right there on street in Rome I looked at Anna and said, “all I wanna do is own a shop like this where I sell hats, bow ties and shoes”. By Feb of 2017 I had resigned. Thru some star aligning I bought Bowline Co. from its previous owners and started making and selling bow ties. This gave me the confidence to think, well shoot if I can learn to make bow ties, I can learn to make hats. Candidly learning how to make hats is way harder. For one, the trade has a lot of gatekeepers, secrecy and folklore. My hope was to have a mentor and be an apprentice but I learned early on I was going to have to really dig and research and fight for what I was dreaming up because hat makers don’t want to share their secrets. But looking back, I love that I didn’t get anything served up to me on a platter, I am proud to say that I genuinely built my business from the ground up thru my own blood, sweat, tears and steam burns. So I started learning and researching in 2017, practicing in early 2018 and then built my own website and brought my hats to market at the end of 2019.

I source the best materials in the world for my hats. I make hats out of palm leaf, toquilla straw, rabbit fur felt, coypu fur felt (this is my sustainable fur offering, as coypu are an invasive species) and beaver fur felt. I source raw materials from the United States, Ecuador, Guatemala, Ukraine and Portugal.

My hats are stories, adventures, emotions and creative outlets. All hats start off as blank canvases in the form of raw materials. Then, if it’s a custom order, which is most of my business, I do my best to learn about the client. I feed off of their energy and their stories and, naturally their general aesthetic and personality. We collaborate and I really try to channel what they bring to the table and pair it with what they inspire in me, creatively. It’s kind of a dance. In the end, I think the final product is truly special. For my ready-to-wear options, these are hats that result from a spark of creativity. I’ll find myself watching treatments artists use for garments and want to try it on a hat, or color palates of paintings might inspire me, everything I see day to day is fair game for me and may find itself woven into a hat element. One thing that consistently resonates with me as I work is the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi. The sentiment there is finding beauty in the imperfect. In my day to day life outside of hat-making, I tend to be very much a planner and a perfectionist and tend to be really hard on myself. For whatever reason, I’m able to let my guard down with my hats. Now don’t get me wrong, on the technical elements of making my hats, I’m tight. But when it comes to the design and the trim, if something goes awry, I lean into those “mistakes” and let them take the project in a new direction. Often those “mistakes” end up sparking my favorite elements on a hat.

I make all my hats the old fashioned way, one by one, steaming the felts, stretching them over wooden hat blocks, hand stitching the sweatbands, hand cutting the brims, hand shaping the crowns and truly fitting the piece for the client. Some of the tools I have in my shop were made as far back as 1850. That’s just really beautiful to me.

When I was thinking about the business name and branding, etc, my jumping off point was the phrase “madder than a hatter” and the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. So it was sort of a progression from the Mad Hatter, which was too on the nose for me, to, well, let’s spin that into Mad Patti Hat Co.. You see the time warp in my branding and if you recall in the story, the Mad Hatter is sentenced to death for “murdering the time”. This notion resonated and as I thought about it, it felt so applicable to the work I was doing. There are faster and easier ways to make hats, but instead, I do it the slow, old-fashioned way. I murder time. I, too, am guilty of murdering time. It all just clicked and felt like the perfect slogan for Mad Patti Hat Co. “Guilty of Murdering Time”.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I want people to know they can get less expensive hats than what I offer, but that I truly believe as a custom hat maker I offer something you just absolutely can’t get elsewhere. So many people think they can’t wear hats because “hats don’t look good on me” or “I wish I could be a hat person” but that’s because none of us have “off the rack” head shapes. Hats are such deeply personal accessories. They become part of your identity. With the right brim and crown proportions, a good shape and a good fit, everyone with a head looks good in hats. Finding those right proportions, shapes and details is what you get from me as a custom hat maker. Something that sets me apart, is the amount of time I dedicate to each client for their custom build. My clients are involved with their hat build every step of the way, I really work to create a bond and level of trust with my clients so I can channel “them” into their hat. I share pictures and process videos all along the way. On average, I probably dedicate between 15 – 20 hours to each client’s hat build, between sourcing materials, collaborating, creating, mocking up ideas, tweaking things, etc. I want the hat to be something they’re excited about and resemble what they dreamed of. So, when you think about what professionals in a trade get paid per hour, and you consider the fact that the felt hats I make will last you 50-100 years, you start to understand why these hats are the investment that they are. I’m creating heirloom pieces for people. That responsibility is not lost on me.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I launched my brand and business in October of 2019, opening a showroom in downtown Portland, Maine. Fast forward to March of 2020, it became clear that our “two weeks” of lockdown for Covid was probably going to be a much larger issue. My wife is a nurse (shoutout to the thankless efforts of our healthcare workers) and was constantly exposed to covid during this time, so by proxy so was I. I didn’t feel right about seeing clients in the showroom as a result so I ended up shutting it down and moving everything to our unfinished attic. There were days it was so hot up there I would be pouring sweat by the end of my work day, and when winter came, the days were so freaking cold. I’d have to bring my steam tanks for my steamer and iron downstairs at the end of the day because the water would freeze overnight otherwise. I took my budget for rent and started applying it to boosting posts on Instagram and really grew a solid customer base that way. Then in 2021, I finished the attic space and made it a legitimate shop. In the spring of 2022 I bought a 1978 Toyota HiLux with a custom chinook camper body and slapped my logo on it. I use it now for most of my pop up shopping events and it’s an awesome attention grabber and marketing tool. I feel proud of how I reacted to a historical event that could have easily squelched my dream before it even grew legs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.madpatti.com/
• Instagram: @madpattihatco
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madpattihatco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meg-patti-9491b647/
• Twitter: @madpattihatco
• Google: https://goo.gl/maps/SXBUCgCKvwhaWDHL8

Image Credits
Kayte Demont