A Historic Hat Shop Looks Forward to a New Home

Most sartorially savvy New Yorkers can tell you where to find at least one of the few hat stores left in the city. There's J.J. Hat Center on Fifth Avenue just below the Empire State Building, Arnold Hatters on Eighth Avenue near Macy's, and Bencraft Hatters's two locations, in Boro Park and Williamsburg. But only a true headgear maven knows where Worth & Worth, the Tiffany of local haberdasheries, has been hiding itself these past few years.

After nearly 80 years in business, Worth & Worth closed its shop at Madison Avenue and 43rd Street in 2000. While many patrons assumed it had vanished for good, it has actually been doing a healthy mail-order and Internet business out of a small showroom deep inside a building at the corner of 55th Street and Sixth Avenue.

But those years of relative anonymity will end November 2, when Worth & Worth rejoins the sunlit world, taking up residence in a new storefront on West 57th Street.They'll celebrate with a gala opening attended by favored clients and fellow hatters.

"It'll be good to get our face on the street," the suave, acutely polite man who is the public face of Worth & Worth, Orlando Palacios, said. He co-owns the business with Harry and Heidi Rosenholtz. Mr. Palacios sports an imperial goatee, and is a fine, walking advertisement for hat-wearing, since he looks so sharp in them.The new store will carry Worth & Worth usual line of felt fedoras, handmade in Guerra, Italy, at the foot of the Italian Alps; hand-woven Montecristi straw hats from Ecudor; as well as assorted porkpies, derbies, wool caps, and beaver, mink, and sable fur hats.

Mr. Palacios said he had been casting about for a new, more visible home since February but had no luck until July, when he ran an errand at a nearby Staples. "I'm looking up and there's a sign, ‘For Rent.'" The landlord of 45–47 W. 57th Street was excited to welcome a hatter into his building, which also houses a bespoke tailor and a hairdresser-day spa. He offered a 10-year lease at a rate Mr. Palacios called "very, very good."

The 12,000-square-foot, fourth-floor space will be open between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and it will feature a unique bit of streetside advertising. At night, a five-minute video will be projected on a scrim in the window. It will tell the story of a lost hat which eventually finds its owner. "It's kind of like ‘The Red Balloon,'" Mr. Palacios said, referring to the classic 1956 French film. Celebrity defense lawyer Edward Hayes, a longtime Worth & Worth patron, will star at the man who misplaces his chapeau. Other celebrity clients include Tom Wolfe, Nicholas Cage, and James Spader.

The 10-year lease is important to Mr. Palacios. "We don't want to move. We want to be that oasis in Midtown and take care of our people."

Worth & Worth was founded in the 1920s and was first located on the ground floor of the old Astor Hotel on Broadway and 44th Street. Mr. Palacios does not know the identity of the original owners, but he says that Harvey Kane bought the business sometime in the 1930s. When Harry Rosenholtz married Kane's daughter, Heidi, he entered the trade.

By the time the landlord of Worth & Worth's Madison address raised the rent to $28,000 a month from $14,000 in the late 1990s, Mr. Rosenholtz was already prepared to pack it in. "When he closed the store, he was pretty fed up with the hat world," Mr. Palacios said. "It's not easy. Not everyone wears a hat. He couldn't find a good location he could afford." Mr. Palacios began his association with Mr. Rosenholtz as a designer, helping to created the Worth & Worth line and handblocking all of the Montecristi panamas in his studio space on 37th Street. "It was the last day before the landlord said we had to get out," he said, "and we had over 30,000 hats in stock that hadn't been moved."The hatmaker was horrified that these lids might be sacrificed. "I have a connection with these things!" He rented a truck, loaded up the merchandise and moved them to a warehouse in Greenwich Village.

Over the next few months, he kept in touch with Harry Rosenholtz. Mr. Rosenholtz complained, "I keep getting all these phone calls from all the customers, saying ‘Where's your store?'" Mr. Palacios spied an opportunity. He offered to assume the operation of the enterprise, working out of an old storeroom Worth & Worth had used for wholesaling purposes. The two parties worked out a partnership. Rather than advertise, Mr. Palacios created a glossy catalog and shipped it out to the addresses of Worth & Worth's 90,000-strong mailing list. Though the mailing was ill-timed — the catalogs were mailed on September 11, 2001 — the reaction was strong. "It went off like a rocket. People started finding us."

Still, the reborn Worth & Worth was operating out of public view, and thus remained something of a treasured secret among hatwearers. "Being hidden at this old showroom, you didn't have the visibility," he said. "People are still finding us. There was a lot of word of mouth. A hat guy will tell another hat guy. Though some don't want others to know where they get their hats, because they're very protective of the source. It drives me crazy."

It will be tougher to keep Worth & Worth a secret now, and Mr. Palacios is happy about that. "Now I'm on the map," he said, looking out his new picture window at the potential customers down on the sidewalk. "As I put it on our flier, ‘57th Street's now got its head on straight.'"