Sitting outside the 212 Pier café, you can watch folks stroll into Fedora Primo, the renowned Los Angeles hat shop down the block. In the time it takes to savor a latte, they emerge, swaggering down the street in delight. There’s a new lilt in their steps and maybe they catch a quick glance of themselves in the reflection of the café windows—sporting their new hats.
Perhaps it’s a huge, floppy, striped summer woman’s hat or a classic men’s design, Frank Strauss of Fedora Primo has quite a selection for all styles and price ranges. I met with him in his store on a sunny afternoon and received an education in hat-speak.
Strauss’s well-crafted hats come from around the globe: Christina’s of London, Panama and Milan hats from Borsalino in Italy, Helen Kaminski hats from Australia, Parks from Canada, or authentic fisherman hats from Greece, and classic bowlers in a range of colors.
For women, he has elegant wide-brimmed “Kentucky Derby” or Ascot hats, tiny “cocktail hats,” and cloches, better known as flapper hats. You will also find knit caps and berets in every color.
Strauss officially opened this business, after much trial and error, on Nov. 24, 2000. He is a tall fellow in thick-framed glasses. He says his selection “ranges from classic to avant-garde.”
“I didn’t have an interest in hats until I picked up a reed [straw] lifeguard hat at Sport Chalet and felt centuries of mankind run through that simple hat ... I thought, ‘This isn’t a hat; this is protection, artistry, and history right here in my hands.”
The clientele is “phenomenally skewed,” Strauss describes, “from 5-year-olds who love to come in here to a 92-year-old who drives here in his Mini Cooper.”
Among his loyal patrons are body builders, models, writers, and musicians. Of course, in Santa Monica there are celebrities, including Kate Hudson (who buys hats for her children), members of the Eagles and Van Halen, Angelica Huston, Tracey Ullman, and Jon Voight.
Strauss shows me a tri-cornered hat, like something from the Revolutionary War, ordered especially for Tim Robbins. Strauss bought many of them, and he says they are selling well.
Many hats from Fedora Primo show up in magazines, plays, movies, on TV, and even in the opera!
The customers are Strauss’s favorite part of his store. “It’s my social life,” he jokes.
The store is located at 216 Pier Ave., Santa Monica, Calif. (800) 980-4287 or e-mail: [email protected]
