Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
WEST VALLEY CITY — For customers at one Salt Lake area clothing store, an employee offers a nostalgic touch one hat at a time.
Dustin Williams has been shaping hats at A.A. Callister, a western clothing retail store in West Valley City, for about 10 years. It’s a job he found a passion for since he was in high school when his mother pushed him to find a job.
Since then, he’s shaped plenty of hats for many people.
“The best part of my job is you get to know someone very well just because of the hat,” he said. “A hat will speak volumes about someone before you even ask them what their name is. That’s really a cool thing. It’s very intimate. You get to know your customers and you get to know your clientele before they even talk to you.”
Hat shapers, Williams admits, are “few and far between,” but it’s also a growing group after a drop-off over the decades.
But what exactly does a hat shaper do? A shaper forms a hat to the customer’s hat facial features. There’s an art to it, also.
“A cowboy’s hat is a reflection of one's personality,” Williams adds. “So you will shape it to not only fit (their) facial features, but also to fit (their) personality.”
While Williams has become the go-to person shaping hats in West Valley City, he’s come a long way from his beginning in the field.
He said he was 15 when his mother told him that he needed a job to pay for any nonessential spending. With his sister already working at A.A. Callister, Williams found a job at the company’s jewelry counter.
While exploring the place, he ran into the business’s hat shaper and immediately became fascinated in the field. So he practiced using the steam from an old dishwasher to shape one of his mother’s cowboy hats.
“Every time she’d put a load in, I’d be in the kitchen steaming it up and pressing it out, and I ended up turning it into this really ugly, ugly top hat,” he said. “I wore it around everywhere. I was so proud of it. I thought it was the coolest thing I ever saw.”
That spring, a spot in the hat shaping department opened. He’s since moved on from his primitive hat shaping techniques.
Williams said many of the customers say he reminds them of old westerns. He brings a personal touch to hats that’s mostly gone from the retail industry.
“I took right to it and I’ve been at it for 10 years now,” he said. “It’s something I absolutely love.”
