Amazonas Real Brazilian Tarp Hat and Baseball Cap

Tarp Hat and Tarp baseball cap review



Hey folks, Well for the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to test a couple of very unique products.
The Tarp Hat and the Tarp baseball cap are made by the Amazonas Real Brazilian Tarp Hat Company.

www.tarphat.co.uk

These hats are made in Brazil by local villagers who are employed by the company to turn used tarps into the finished products. The tarps themselves come from open cargo trucks, which constantly travel thousands of miles over red dust tracks all over Brazil from the south to the Amazonas in the north.

The tarps, protecting whatever cargo is under them are exposed to all the elements over these huge journeys and it is this, which gives them their unique look. Hit by the sun, wind, rain, and frost and clogged with the dust of the roads each tarp will have a different weathered look to it.

After they have reached the end of their use as a cover for cargo, the tarps which still have plenty of life in them are washed and prepared then are giving to the villagers to be turned into the hats. The hats are all cut, shaped, stitched, sewn by hand and are ready to go.

Price:
Tarp hat: £20.99- £21.99 + pp (brim size depending)
Baseball cap: £ 11.99 + pp

Individuality:



Each hat and cap is a total 1 off, so you will have a totally unique hat. They can come with:

No patches or writing
Special rare with extreme patches.
Very rare with large Portuguese black writing.

Some if the patches are big, others are small and the rarer ones will have the Portuguese lettering or come with numbers. This obviously comes from whatever was printed on the tarps in there former life but it is these details which give the hat its character.
Whatever you get your hat will have its own story to tell. This is what attracted me to the hats in the first place. They looked beat up and weather worn and you could imagine sitting around a campfire and listening to the tale of their journey.



Tarp Hat Construction:

Brim:




The brim is cut out from a single piece of tarp and on my hat measures approximately 3 ¼” at the front sweeping around to 3” on the sides and back. It has a metal wire sewn into the edge. This is strong and flexible, keeps the brim up, and allows you to shape the hat into whatever style you choose. The wire is from inside old tyres that have come off the same trucks that the tarps come from.

Grommets:



There are 4 grommets on the hat, 2 on each side. They have a gap of approximately 8mm each giving you plenty of ventilation to keep your head cool. In addition, you can purchase a wind strap that passes through these grommets to secure the hat on your head in windy conditions.

Crown:



The crown has a depth of approximately 4”. At first I thought this might be slightly too small to feel secure enough on my head but after putting it on and wearing it I found that this was not the case. I just was not used to wearing a slightly shorter crown, once I had it on it felt great, and it did not slip around at all.



The top is securely sewn on to the middle section and the join reinforced with a strong webbing type material. On the inside of the top a piece of material has been sewn in this has a bit of blurb from the company, which is a nice little touch.



The inside bottom has a 1” elasticated band all around the circumference. This helps to secure the hat on to your head but it is not so tight that it is restrictive. It also covers the join between the brim and the crown.

Stitches:

All of the stitching on my hat has been done very neatly and at the right tension. There seem to be 2 different types of stitching,



The first type is the stitching that holds the main parts of the hat together as well as the patch on the brim. These are done in a smaller orange thread.



The second type of stitching, holds the big patches on and is done in a thicker white thread. These stiches seem to be for decorative purposes as well as functional. Up to date I have not had any loose thread/ undone stitches on the hat.

Baseball cap Construction:




The cap is made from 6 shaped sections of tarp that have been sewn together to form the “body”. On the inside, these joins have been covered and reinforced with a 1.6cm wide strip of material that covers the entire length of the seams. Where all the sections join at the top there is a brass press-stud helping to keep everything secure. The edges of the sections have been folded over and as with the hat; there is a 2.6 cm wide band that has been sewn in, all around the inside. This helps by covering the sewn edges and act like a sweatband.
Velcro Fastener:



At the back of the cap, there is the Velcro fastener. Each side is approximately 9cm long and 2cm wide making it sturdy. These 2 tabs are securely sewn into the hat. The fastener allows you to adjust the cap to whatever tightness is needed. In some caps, I have found the fastener strap can be quite irritating after wearing for any length of time, but on this cap I haven’t been troubled by it at all and so far there has been no problems with the Velcro coming undone due to wear.

Peak:



At the front, you have the peak. This measures 17.5cm x 13cm at its widest and longest points. The peak is stiffened with a piece of polycarb which gives it reforming memory properties. This is sewn inside a “ Pocket” of the tarp material. On the underside, a liner has been sewn on and the whole lot has been secured to the main body.





Stitches:



Again as with the hat, the stitches on the cap are a high standard. They are neat, solid and have been done to the right tension. The stitching on the patches again varies and although still solid has more of an artistic flare to them.

Performance:

Tarp Hat:

I have to be very picky when it comes to hats as anything to tight and my migraines flare up. Therefore, this was one of the major concerns I had before I received the tarp hat. However I am again lucky in getting a hat that fitted just right. I took it out of the box and put it on straight away. I was delighted that it actually fitted just right and that I would not have to spend day stretching it in. I even thought at the start that it might get a bit loose after a few days of wearing but after a number of weeks, it is still siting perfectly on my head.

Baseball cap:

With the cap, I can wear it slightly looser thanks to the Velcro straps so I haven’t had any problems with it being too restrictive. The only problem I had with the with the cap is I feel it is not deep enough. I like the edge of a cap to come slightly passed the top of my ears. This cap is a fingers width short of this but hat is just a personnel preference.

In The Sun:

Tarp hat:

I am always doing a lot of physical labour more so now, trying to get as much done as I can before the bad weather comes in. When the sun is out and there is no wind it can get pretty hot and one thing I did notice when I first started reading about the tarp hats was a few people wondering whether the hats would retain more heat than others due to the fact it was made from the tarps. Obviously, your head does get hotter than if you wore no hat at all but I found that it retained no more heat than any other hat I have had.

The grommets certainly help here, letting in air to help cool you down and apart from having to take it off to give my head a wipe after shifting a load of wood; I never felt the need to take the hat off due to feeling overheated.

The wide brim is great for keeping the sun off your face and neck. Also the fact that it keeps the sun out of my eyes ( another trigger for migraines) is for me personally a really big plus. I have read that a good way to keep cool when it is very hot is to immerse the whole hat in cold water. It has not been hot enough for me to try this but it is what the villagers in Brazil do.

Baseball cap:

The peak is great for keeping the sun out of the eyes and again I haven’t found my head got any hotter than if wearing any other type of cap. The fact that it is slightly shallower mean there was a bit more ventilation from the sides as well as from the half round cut out from the back.

In The Wind:

Tarp Hat:

It gets very windy up here in the North of Scotland especially when autumn comes around. Over the past week in particular the weather here has changed and the wind has increased a lot. The hat was able to cope with moderate winds with very little movement on my head. I would however recommend a wind strap for conditions any worse than this just to be on the safe side. There is nothing worse than having to chase after your hat because it wasn’t secured.

Baseball cap:

There has been no trouble at all with wearing the cap even in strong gusts. If the wind has caught the peak, the cap is secure enough on my head that it won’t budge.

In The Rain:

Well living in Scotland I have had plenty of opportunity to test both the hat and the cap in various types of bad weather. Both are retreated with Grainger’s Fabsil giving further water resistant qualities to the tight weave of the material.

The brim of the hat gives an excellent all round cover, keeping the rain off the face neck and face (especially handy for us spectacle wearers).
The caps peak also performs well keeping the rain out of the eyes.




In drizzle and light rain, droplets will bead on the surface and roll off completely. In medium/moderate showers, again most of the rain will run off with a few spots settling in to the fabric. In both light and medium showers, I could wear both all day without having to worry about having to dry them out.



In heavy showers, the water will run off but will seep through eventually. I found that on both the cap and the hat after approximately 1 1/2 hours I started to feel slight damp on the inside.

I was very pleased at how water resistant both turned out to be as I expected to feel the rain getting through a lot sooner as in the other hats I wear.

Conclusion:

I would highly recommend the Amazonas Real Brazilian Tarp Hat Company and the items they produce to anybody. They have a great ethos, creating jobs for local communities in Brazil and being “green” in the way they have taken what could have been just a pile of tarps to fill some dump and transforming them into such great items. They are also very friendly and approachable company and are happy to answer any questions or concerns.

The products themselves are made to a high standard an I expect they will probably outlast me. They look completely different to other products out there. Since I started wearing the hat and cap I have had quite a few people ( Strangers included) come up to me asking about them. They are smart, durable, rugged and perform their job extremely well and come at a low cost.

Thanks for looking.