? ?
- John McLaughlin: It's the last thing you put on,
but it's the first thing people see.
- Hats are sculptures that we just choose to wear
and that are really-- signify personality.
- We're the Brass Rooster Hat Company.
We are traditional hatters here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
- Milwaukee hasn't had a hatter in over 15 years.
I made my first hat when I was a junior in high school.
My husband was always a hat guy.
He had been wearing hats
ever since he found his grandfather's.
- When a hat lover marries a hatmaker,
she makes the hat lover into a hatmaker.
And we opened up this place.
- What we started seeing was in media, in film,
in entertainment, in print,
hats were coming back in vogue.
- We saw the need, and we're stepping up
because people want them,
and we know the quality of what used to be made,
and that's what we're making right here.
When you make something by hand,
it takes a little piece of you with it.
It's got that extra bit of care that's given to it.
If you want something that's extremely high quality,
it's always made by hand
because we're better than any machine will ever be.
To me, it's being able to continue something
that was almost lost.
It's like saving an endangered animal.
- Every piece of equipment we find is golden to us
because the equipment has become so rare.
Our line of hats is two-fold.
We have our Stand-Out, which is the more contemporary side.
Our Look Sharp are the hats in our line
that are all taken
from real traditional styling of men's hats.
- With every hat that I make, it's a sense of pride.
It's art that somebody gets to use every day.
- There's the term called "cock of the walk."
When men leave the hat store wearing their hat,
they've got a strut, they've got a movement about them.
- This country used to make great things,
and we can make great things again.
This country was built by small companies
that were husbands and wives
and brothers and friends
that knew that they could make something that was fantastic.
- The most natural thing for our progression
is to go from making custom hats
to presenting and designing a line of hats
that we are so proud of, of being American-made,
of continuing a hat craft.
- Every cent that we've made,
every hour that we've spent in here,
we've put into this shop because we believe it's worthwhile,
we believe it's something that we can pass on to our kids.
And we believe it's a craft worth saving.