SEATTLE — A newly re-opened shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market sells hats and offers customers a trip back in time.
Eclipse Hat Shop first opened more than 70 years ago, and owner Sharon Hagerty is singularly focused on resurrecting the small business.
"I am a very high energy person - it's just like, me and coffee,” she said.
She operates the shop herself, and when she’s not chatting it up with customers, she can be found cleaning, restoring, and making new hats. It's honestly hard to keep up with her, and she knows it.
"'Oh my god that woman talks a lot, she talks really fast, she loves hats,’" she laughed, mimicking what she imagines customers say.
The storefront on Western Avenue is only a couple hundred square feet, but it contains more than half a century of history.
“I will say it is wonderful to sit at my desk and people walk by and you hear the word 'haberdashery!'" Hagerty said.
The term was still common when Herman Helmun opened the original shop in 1949. By the time Sharon met him in the '90's, he had quite a following.
"Herman had people all day long just sitting at the counter,” Hagerty said. “He was a wonderful man and very kind, and people just loved hanging out in his shop."
When he retired, Hagerty took over. But, life changes - she became a mom, closed up shop and moved away.
Some 20 years later, her daughter is fully grown and she's back.
"When people ask me who my target market is, I'm like 'everybody!'" she said.
Her inventory includes Western hats, vintage hats, wool felt and fur felt hats, even an old pop-up top hat.
She measures the head of every customer who walks through the door, and for custom hats, she uses her prized antique possession: a Conformateur, a 19th-century tool that measures the variation in the circumference of a cranium.
Hagerty’s appreciation for antique hat-making tools is evident throughout the shop – it’s almost like a functional museum.
But she’s attracting new, modern customers daily.
"I feel like a lot of things nowadays are just for everybody,” said customer Kevin Buster. "But having something that's customized for individual people is really something special."
Eclipse Hat Shop | 1518 Western Ave. | Open daily except on Mondays
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