Before Ray Panice goes out and about, he makes sure to don a hat, usually a gray or brown fedora. “A hat makes you look like something,” he says. “It has style and character, and it identifies you. People can see you from a mile away, and they know it’s you. My wife always knows that it’s me across the way.
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New World Hatters occupies a busy stretch of West Madison dominated by Korean-run shoe and clothing stores. The store’s most dramatic element is the sign out front, an upright black-and-white affair. It looks like it should be lit up, yet it never is–Panice can’t see spending the money for the electricity. In the tile-floored showroom, worn display cases are piled high with ready-to-wear fedoras, homburgs, derbies, and Kangol caps. New World has traditionally done big business in brightly colored, broad-brimmed “pimp hats.” They fell out of favor for a while, but “today everybody wears them,” says Panice of his lemon yellow and bright green versions.
The showroom is the province of sales manager Marvin Sing. “You see a young man come in, he’ll want a cap,” says Sing. “You take an old guy, he’ll want an expensive hat. I know. I’ve been selling for years.”
The area around the store started changing in the 1950s. Ray and Herman were in charge by 1968, when riots erupted following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. “We had friends in the police department, and they told us to get the hell out of there,” recalls Panice. “We left with our hamburger dinner in the frying pan.” The hat shop was burned to the ground.
