Canvas hats, straw hats, leather hats, felt hats. Hats with feathers, silver medallions and even rattlesnake skin.
So many styles, but it’s still a cowboy hat. And it’s still the best way to look the part at the fair.
Dicki DePaulis has sold cowboy hats at the Evergreen State Fair for nine years.
She plans to be there every day through Labor Day.
As quick as she sells one hat, she’s got a half-dozen more to fill up the racks and stacks on tables, counters and shelves.
Her sales booth is located near the horse barns, and many of her customers are kids with ponies. But sometimes she gets guys such as Steve Conradi of Everett.
This week, DePaulis showed Conradi a felt hat she had just steamed and shaped into what she calls “a Montana slope with mule kick.” Conradi chose a straw hat instead. He announced that he should now be known as Bad Bart. DePaulis laughed.
An Eatonville resident, DePaulis and her husband got their start 15 years ago hawking Australian bush hats. So enamored with things Down Under were they then, the couple even bought an alligator. The reptile, sex unknown, is named Beatrice after DePaulis’ mother. Bea still travels along in a trailer with the stacks of hats.
But now, on the fair circuit, the cowboy hat is the top seller.
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