Montana man customizes cowboy hats

NORRIS, Mont. – Larry Shore is part barber, part bartender and all cowboy. Saunter up to his “hat bar,” and he’ll spruce up what you’ve got on your head – as long as it’s made of felt or straw. If you haven’t got a cowboy hat to spruce, he’ll look you over and tell you what might suit you.

Shore, 54, recently moved to Norris with his wife, Terry. With them they brought their western shop, called WesTrends. They sell horse tack and western clothing, but the part that sets the Shores apart is the steam that hisses into Shore’s face as he shapes each hat individually.

Shore is part of a dying breed of craftsmen who can take a cowboy hat and customize it with nothing but hot steam and shrewd hands, giving people exactly the look they’re seeking.

“I have people say, ‘Hey! Brad Paisley had a neat hat on the other night,’ ” Shore said at his new shop, which sits on a ranch Terry’s father and grandmother homesteaded in 1912.

Kevin Costner also has inspired more than a few requests.

Shore learned the craft in Bozeman while working at Wagner’s, a western shop on Main Street. Back then, most stores that sold cowboy hats bought them unshaped and customized them for the customer – taking into account personal preference and facial features. When the boys at Wagner’s weren’t working, they were practicing their hat shaping, Shores said.

Today, more and more shops sell hats that were shaped in the factory. According to Shore, that’s a shame.

“By today’s plan, people get into the store, see a hat they like fairly well,” he said. “They don’t get what they want, but they get something that’s close. That’s the best thing I have on the competition.”

Factory-shaped hats don’t offer the custom fit Shore can provide, either. The key to a custom fit is steaming. Steaming a hat, Shore says, is a lot like fluffing a pillow. The heat and moisture open up the fibers to make them malleable. Over steam, Shore can give more lip to a brim or more scoop to a crown to fulfill particular requests.

The steamer can also refurbish cowboy hats that have seen better days.

“They get stepped on, they get wet – they’ll lose some shape from that,” he said. “At the horse shows, people always have four or five hats they need shaping.”

Shore has a knack for noting facial features and head size and using that information to recommend brim style or crown height. He can help hat buyers decide what color would best bring out their features.

Terry Shore is responsible for the tack side of WesTrends, but she is through and through a hat woman.

“People are 50 percent better looking in a hat,” she said. “You see any man in a hat – they turn heads.”

While the Shores don’t know exactly know how many hat shapers still work in Montana, Terry said their salesmen tell them they are becoming more and more rare.

One salesman who covered the entire Rocky Mountain west had only one other customer who bought “open crown hats,” the most basic form a hat can be in.

The Shores opened their first shop in Whitefish in the 1970s, and then moved to Columbia Falls. Last winter, they completed their move to Norris.

But WesTrends is designed to move. Much of their merchandise, including a steamer, can be loaded into a trailer and tugged around the state to horse shows and fairs. As much as Shore is a hat shaper, he’s a professor in everything hats. He can trace the history of various shapes, and read what kind of climate hats were designed for. He considers a cowboy hat a piece of work gear as much as a fashion accessory. He acknowledges that many people don’t see it the same way.

“Today, you forget about the working aspect,” he said. “What they’re designed to do.”