Stetson Open Road

The Open Road is a western hat cut down for everyday wear. Its crown is about eleven centimetres high, lower than the classic cowboy hat's, and pressed in a cattleman crease: one long dent down the middle and a dent on either side. The brim is about seven centimetres wide, nearly flat, with a bound edge and a slight curl at the sides. It is made of fur felt, usually in the pale grey-brown Stetson calls silverbelly, with a grosgrain band and a small metal pin in the shape of a branding iron marked JBS.

The initials are John B. Stetson's. He founded his company in Philadelphia in 1865 and, with a hat he called the Boss of the Plains, produced the pattern that cowboy hats have followed ever since. By the early twentieth century his factory was the largest hatworks in the world. The Open Road came much later, in 1937 by the company's account: a hat meant to cross from ranch to town. It was sold with an open crown, for each buyer to crease as he liked. From 1948, Stetson says, it left the factory already creased.

Stetson presents it as a crossover hat, one that moves between country and town and suits a woman as well as a man. It was also the hat of at least one president: the company says Lyndon Johnson was rarely photographed on his Texas ranch without his Open Road, and it has been worn by artists and outlaws as well as ranchers.

The firm behind it has been through hard times. Its Philadelphia factory closed in the early 1970s, the company went bankrupt in 1986, and Stetson hats are now made under licence by Hatco in Texas. The Open Road is still in the catalogue, sold in grades of felt from the standard 6X to an online-only 30X, with the same low crown, the same brim and the same crease.