In each “Behind the Scenes” segment, Village Media's Scott Sexsmith sits down with one of our local journalists to talk about the story behind the story.
These interviews are designed to help you better understand how our community-based reporters gather the information that lands in your local news feed. You can find more Behind the Scenes from reporter across Ontario here.
Today's spotlight is on GuelphToday.com's Mark Pare, whose story 'Modern-day hat maker in Guelph revives lost art of millinery' was published on Feb. 26.
Below is the full story, in case you missed it.
Brody Martin had been collecting hats since he was a little kid.
But when he started taking things seriously as a millinery, he developed a passion and a business he doesn’t have any plans of stopping.
And funny that this passion is growing in the very city where the famed Biltmore hats were made for so many years.
“I’ve been a hat collector since I was a little kid. I’ve always played around with them, messed around with them,” Martin, the owner of Martin Millinary Co., said. “And then I started taking it a little more serious a couple years ago, trying to figure out the craft behind it.”
Fedoras also became a normal thing for Martin, who credits former hockey superstar, turned broadcaster, P.K. Subban for bringing the style back to the mainstream in sports.
Martin played junior hockey, and is now a member of the Western Ontario Super Hockey League’s Woodstock Lakers.
As a hockey guy, when he saw Subban doing that, “I went and bought my own fedoras, and that’s what I started doing.”
What was it that flipped the switch from wearing the hats to wanting to make them?
On a trip to North Bay to see his dad, Martin wore a rancher hat to church one Sunday morning.
“Everybody in the church was complimenting this hat that I had on,” he said.
On the way back, he had time to kill in the passenger seat, so he did what anyone else would do: he went on his phone.
Martin took a deep dive into mad hatters and millinery videos.
“I was really interested in the history side of it, I’m a big history person,” he said.
One of the videos he saw was of California-based hat maker Nick Foquet, setting the hats on fire and explaining the craftsmanship behind it.
When he got home, he went and took apart his hat collection, learned hand stitching and figured out some of the other pieces of the puzzle.
The different fabrics, the fashion, the brushing, cutting, using the fire to either give hats a rustic look or burning logos or other details into the hat.
The pieces he put together got his friends talking.
“A lot of people were like ‘you should take this more seriously,’” Martin said.
“I’m the kind of person that dives into everything with both feet. I think probably that week, I launched the store online.”
It’s a Shopify store, with worldwide shipping. The physical shop where he does the work is a tiny alcove in the basement of a Guelph apartment building. He is the property manager.
“You can do so many things, and there’s such a demand for it, believe it or not,” Martin said.
“You have the 60-year-olds, the 50-year-olds that love wearing them because they grew up in a time where it was normal. And then you have people around our age, their 20s and 30s who are sports figures or athletes or just want to wear a nice hat out in the sun, walking down the main street of Guelph.”
The business is also a tip of the cap to Biltmore. Martin doesn’t want to be compared to them, but just hopes to do his best to be the modern day hat maker in Guelph.
“It’s funny that Biltmore was already here, and now I’m here and doing hats,” he said. “It’s almost like it fell in my lap.”
