Hats Off To Craftsmanship As Practiced By Tradesman

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Gary White was wearing his favorite blue fedora during an evening out when a woman stopped him.

"Has anyone ever told you you look like a Chicago hood in that hat?" she asked.

That made White's day.

People notice hats. White makes them.

In his solitary shop on a gritty block in Buffalo, he has become hatter to the stars.

That was White's yellow fedora on Warren Beatty in "Dick Tracy." His fedoras hid all those shifty eyes in "The Last Capone" and shielded Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade."

It's an old-fashioned trade, practiced, fittingly enough, in an old-fashioned store. The Custom Hatter, where White set up shop in 1989, is an oasis from the modern-day world and the boarded-up buildings and graffiti that surround it.

Frank Sinatra music plays as White, 41, steps across wooden floors to such aged tools as a crown iron. A 150-year-old conformer shows him how a head is shaped, and a formillion contours the hat to match. An array of hardwood blocks, some nearly 90 years old, structure the crowns. A tolliker helps work the felt. Mason jars hold powdered chemicals to keep the hats in shape.

Yellowing magazine advertisements hang on the walls next to the first hat White ever made. Old trimming ribbon rolled around browning spools is piled on shelves.

He does bow a bit to the modern era, taking orders through an Internet site (www.vis-pro.com).

Hats fell out of fashion for a time, as did the craftsmen who made them. But White says they are making a comeback: A lot of kids who were wearing baseball caps 10 years ago have started looking for a grown-up replacement.

And they're coming to White, one of only a handful of makers of fine hats in the East.

Where someone else might notice the color of a person's eyes, White notices the shape of his head: long front to back or round. He recommends a hat accordingly.

He earned the title of "master hatter" while working as a salesman at Peller & Mure, an upscale men's clothing store here. For a year, he commuted from Buffalo to Lynn, Mass., to learn the trade. For nine years after that, he worked nights building new hats in a converted liquor store around the corner from his childhood home while continuing to work days at Peller & Mure.

Then he ventured full time into hat-making.

"It was probably the best decision I ever made," he said.

Musicians Garth Brooks, Tom Petty and the late Stevie Ray Vaughan called on The Custom Hatter, and requests from Hollywood have become, well, old hat.

But there are still some heads he'd like to dress.

"Jean-Claude Van Damme should wear a hat," White said. "Val Kilmer should wear a hat; he should definitely wear a hat. A lower-crown, snap-brim fedora would look dynamite.

"Everybody looks good in a hat," White said. "It's like framing a picture."

For now, he works alone. He wouldn't mind taking in a good apprentice. But they are hard to find.

"Everybody has it in their pocketbook," he said, "not in their heart."