Company and straw hats in Florence

STRAW HAT MAKING IN FLORENCE

Passion and creativity for fashionable hats

The Fratelli Mazzanti company was founded as a straw hat manufacturer in the early 1960s, thanks to the passion and creativity of Mario Mazzanti and Valeria Paoli, heirs to an artisan identity belonging to the Florentine territory.

Mazzanti Hat maker

Cappellificio Fratelli Mazzanti has always been passionate about the history and tradition of its territory and carries on the history of Florentine straw hats with care and passion, producing Florentine hats in different variants and weaves, distinctive items in men's and women's wardrobes.

The history of the hat factory starts in Campi Bisenzio and is fully part of the centuries-old tradition of Florentine straw hats that began in 1718 with Domenico di Sebastiano Michelacci who, after various experiments, began to grow straw wheat for hats.

It was he who realised, after careful studies, that the seedlings in search of light grew longer, providing a longer straw to be woven, and it was he who concluded that sowing the Marzullo wheat thickly and harvesting it before it ripened provided a soft straw to work with.

STRAW HATS SYNONYMOUS WITH ITALIAN STYLE AND ELEGANCE

As the maestro Odoardo Spadaro sang, the Florentine straw hat is just right for all eventualities. To talk to each other, to love each other, to kiss with impunity under people's noses. But the straw hat had already been the protagonist in other works. Maestro Nino Rota had set to music and performed a libretto written by his mother in 1945; "Un cappello di paglia di Firenze" was the title of a play by Eugene Labiche from 1851 with the original title of "Un chapeau de paille d'Italie" from which a silent film was made in 1928 and directed by René Clair. A brief history that tells how much the straw hat was in fashion and used and widespread not only in Tuscany.

Our hats are now exported all over Europe, Israel, Japan, Latin America and the United States to give that extra touch of Italian style and elegance.

STRAW HATS MADE IN ITALY FROM HARVEST WASTE

The manufacture of straw hats has a long and fascinating history dating back to the Middle Ages when braids were made from the waste from the wheat harvest to be used as headgear. The first examples, crude and rudimentary, were destined to spread and mark the history of fashion as we know it today.

From the first decades of the 18th century, Florence became a centre known and appreciated for its original and handcrafted creations. The Florentine straw hat became the first truly historic "Made in Italy" exported all over the world. It is no coincidence that terms such as chapeaux de paille d'Italie or even Leghorns have become synonymous with authentic Florentine straw hats throughout the western world.

The Fratelli Mazzanti company continues the Florentine tradition of straw hats using vegetable fibres, and straw, but also raffia or agave originating in Yucatan.

Fratelli Mazzanti hats are exported all over Europe, Israel, Japan, Latin America and the United States to give that extra touch of Italian extravagance and elegance that never goes amiss in one's style.

FLORENCE'S STRAW HAT IN CINEMA

Un cappello di paglia di Firenze (Un chapeau de paille d’Italie), the silent film directed by René Clair, was released in cinemas in 1928. It is the film adaptation of the comedy, Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, in five acts by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel that debuted on 14 August 1851 in Paris, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. Since then, the Tuscan straw hat has played a key role in the construction of some of the most emblematic film characters with actors and directors who have associated their image with a certain model of headgear such as Francis Ford Coppola, Harrison Ford, Julian Sands, up to the unforgettable Mariangela Melato in Travolti da un insolito destino... by Lina Wertmuller. How can we not remember Julia Roberts wearing the elegant straw hats in Pretty Woman or Cher in Franco Zeffirelli's Un tè con Mussolini, or the straw cloche that Samantha Jones, played by Kim Cattrall, sports in the hit film Sex and the City.