Our story
Made by hand. Designed in Brooklyn.
CZEVIP is a small hat label run from our Brooklyn, NY office. We design family caps that are hand-embroidered, garment-finished, and shipped with a lifetime craftsmanship guarantee.
Origins
From a Brooklyn loft to a global workshop.
CZEVIP began when our founders decided that the family cap - the kind you wear at the weekend, on the school run, on a road trip - deserved the same craft as a fine felt hat. Embroidery by hand, not by machine. Garment washing for a lived-in feel. Cotton twill we picked ourselves.
Today we design from our Brooklyn office and manufacture through a small network of audited workshops overseas. We visit, we train, we pull from any line that drops our standard.
Craft
Twelve hands per hat.
A single CZEVIP piece passes through twelve pairs of hands before it leaves the workshop. The felt is dyed. The crown is blocked. The brim is cut. The edge is ironed. The ribbon is sewn. The lining is set. The sweatband is stamped. The hat is shaped, brushed, and inspected.
We choose this pace because it produces hats that age with the wearer. A CZEVIP hat should look better in five years than the day it arrived.
Values
What we believe
Slow
Small batches, on purpose.
We release four collections a year. Each is made in runs of a few hundred, never thousands.
Honest
Materials we name.
Wool from Yorkshire, fur felt from Portugal, straw from Ecuador. Every component traceable.
Durable
Lifetime reshape guarantee.
Send your hat back any time for free re-shaping and re-blocking. We will keep it wearable for life.
Where we are
Brooklyn design, global craft.
Designed in our Brooklyn, NY studio at 1 Pier Place, shipped from our US warehouse. Embroidered and finished by a small network of craftspeople we have trained and audited over the past decade. We answer every email from Brooklyn, Mon-Fri 9-5 EST.
Hat expertise
24 years of headwear craft.
Caps & Closures
What we know about baseball-style headwear.
A dad cap is a soft-structured baseball-style cap with a curved brim (visor) and an adjustable metal or fabric closure at the back. CZEVIP dad caps use a six-panel crown with garment-washed cotton twill for a lived-in feel from the first wear. We do not use snapbacks - we find the curved brim and softer crown work for a wider range of face shapes.
The hand embroidery on each cap is done on a single-needle frame in our Brooklyn workshop using Madeira polyester thread, which holds color through dozens of washes without bleeding.
Wool & Felt
Heritage fedoras and berets.
A fedora is a felt hat with a lengthwise crease in the crown (called a "center dent") and a brim that can be turned up or down at the back. Our Heritage Wool Felt Fedora uses 100% wool felt body with a grosgrain band, blocked on a wooden form.
A beret is a round, soft, flat-crowned hat made of wool, felt, or jersey fabric. The classic beret has a small stiffener at the crown so it can be pulled to one side. CZEVIP's Wool Beret is made from 100% merino wool felt with a hand-tacked crown.
Straw Hats
Toquilla panama, hand-woven in Cuenca.
A panama hat is a traditional straw hat made from the plaited leaves of the toquilla palm (Carludovica palmata), grown mainly in Ecuador. Authentic panamas are woven by hand; the finest grades take three to eight months to weave per hat. CZEVIP sources directly from a weavers' cooperative in Cuenca.
Sizing & Care
How to measure and how to keep it.
To measure your head circumference, wrap a flexible tape measure around your head one-eighth inch above your ears, across the mid-forehead. US hat sizes are expressed in inches (for example, 22 inches = size 7). Most adult cap sizes fall between 21 and 24 inches. CZEVIP's caps use an adjustable metal back closure to fit most head sizes within this range.
Care: spot clean with a damp cloth and mild detergent for everyday stains. Hand wash in cool water, reshape, air dry flat. Never machine wash or tumble dry - heat shrinks cotton twill and damages embroidery.