Cuenca hats VS Montecristi Hats

What's the difference?

Can you tell which one is a Cuenca hat?

The major difference is that the Cuenca hats are made much faster and are not as high of quality as the Montecristi hats, thus they  are a lot cheaper to produce and sell for a lot less.
They are still a decent hat.  A lot just depends on your personal taste and what you need out of your hat.

Consider the Differences:

The Cuenca hat is formed into the model you see on the web site (the hat on the left side-above) and we do not offer any other shape than that. The Montecristi can have that shape (Fedora#2) or any you desire on my web site. Here we reach another major difference in the two hats. The true Montecristi hat can be re-blocked into whatever shape you like it to be whether it be an Optimo or a Havana it can be reshaped even years later by a hatter. The Cuenca hat does not have that ability to change shape later  because it is a permanent shape made on a machine Press. The Cuenca hat usually lasts a year or two but it is not woven is such a way to last a lifetime like the Montecristi hats. The back weave on the edge is not nearly as strong as a Montecristi hat so if it was pulled on to strongly it might begin to unravel!

A Montecristi Panama hat - Back woven Edge

Bleaching of a Cuenca hat

The strong sun will start breaking down the straw a lot sooner in the Cuenca hats because of the excessive chemical bleaching done to them. The Montecristi hats are smoked with a sulfur over a period of several days and then hand washed in a large basin of water, this is only one step that the Montecristi hats go through that the Cuenca hats are missing, and illustrates at the same time the difference in process that takes much longer in the Montecristi hats verses the Cuenca hats and thus costs more to make.  The process used for the Montecristi hats is by far the best way and the way it has been done since the birth of the Montecristi hats. Cuenca hats were later produced in this faster and inferior method and have found a place in the market of panama hats as a cheaper alternative to the Montecristi panama hat. This is all fine and good but there are just an overwhelming number of panama hat sellers that use the clout of the Montecristi hats to sell their cheaper Cuenca hats, even misrepresenting them as Montecristi hats! This Cuenca hat can be made into whatever form as the Montecristi hats but we only carry one model. I say this to also give you a little warning that there are many places that offer "Montecristi hats" as they call them, in different Models but they are actually only selling the cheaper Cuenca hats. (The price alone should tell you which one it is)

Custom VS Cuenca:

Cuenca hats are Not custom made, so the crown cannot be made higher than 5" or the brim cannot be made larger than 3", generally speaking. 
The Montecristi hats can be custom made to suit you whether it be a 10" crown or a 4".  We can do it because we work directly with the weavers from the very beginning of the process and so we simply have our weaver weave your hat on a taller Block. There is usually an extra charge for the custom hats and they do take longer to complete because as you can imagine it takes a lot more effort and time to make something custom.

 

Color:

Can you tell  Based on color?

Using coloring is also a very difficult way to tell the difference between Montecristi hats and Cuenca hats since there is a Cuenca hat that is made to look similar in color to the Montecristi hat.  Side by side you can tell the difference if the pictures are not overly tweaked as you can see above. The hat on the top left is the original Cuenca model - very bleached  - very white.
The hat on the top right is also a Cuenca hat that they have used less bleach in order to give it a closer appearance to a Montecristi Hat, and it worked very well! In fact some hatters have been so confused by this change that they thought it was a true Montecristi hat! Now a hatter who deals with Montecristi hats for many years will tell you in a second that it is not a Montecristi hat but in reality there are probably less than 10 hatters in the whole USA who really know what they are doing with a Montecristi hat! So likely there is not one near you to give you proper advice about the hat you bought on Ebay! The hat on the bottom is a Montecristi hat but as the pictures above illustrate when you take pictures of a hat separately, it is really hard to compare hat pictures for color differences to tell which is a Montecristi hat! Lighting differences and other factors are not always the same. The hat on the left at the top of this page is a Cuenca hat and is the EXACT same hat as the picture with the horse hair band! The pictures were taken only minutes apart, but they look totally different from each other and thus illustrate that pictures alone are a really hard way to judge a hat even if they are giving you pictures of the very hat they will mail you!


These two are the Exact Same hat!
 Taken within 5 Minutes of each other!
Under different lighting


(I changed the band for the sake of illustration to help  throw you off)

In short:

There is no easy way to tell the difference with pictures. 
The easiest way to tell the difference is in the price! A true Montecristi hat is not priced at $48…is the price of a fino Cuenca hat. Yes they do get finer in the Cuenca hats as well.  You could pay as much as $150 for a really fine woven Cuenca hat that looks close to a true Montecristi hat to the average person. But looking closer, there are major differences which time will make very evident!  I feel obligated to inform you of this and to inform you that there are an alarming # of web sites stating their hats are true Montecristi hats but in reality they are not!
Please be aware and shop wisely!
In short if,  you are NOT looking for a True Montecristi hat then the Cuenca hat will be great for you, but if you want a true Montecristi hat do not be fooled by a cheap price tag, it just is not possible.