It’s fun to get out of your fashion comfort zone, and there’s no better place to do that than a festival – be it Festival Acadiens, Sugar Cane, or any of the upcoming fall events in Acadiana. One accessory that’s comfortable, functional, and stands out in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd is a hat. Not an ordinary cap. A hat, like a fedora, Panama hat, a custom cowboy hat or any one of the unique head coverings from The Cajun Hatter in downtown Lafayette. Owner Colby Hébert makes ready-to-wear and fine-tailored, custom hats for men and women that reflect his efforts to preserve a Cajun identity for the next generation.

Despite of his penchant for collecting hats as a kid, hat-making was never on Hébert’s radar as a craft. When he left his native New Iberia for New Orleans, at 22, he was fixed on a career in the film industry. Yet, three years after working as a set costumer and actor, his course was changed in an “Aha!” moment – an instance that was as ordinary and random as they come.

“It was September 10, 2015, and I was sitting in a room in New Orleans’ Garden District practicing for an audition,” he recalls. “And this YouTube video came on about a hat maker. As I was watching him, it hit me like a lightning bolt: ‘That’s what I’m gonna do.’ The first hat I made was a classic felt fedora with a vintage grosgrain ribbon band. It’s still my favorite hat today, because it was the moment I got it.” 

After fine-tuning his craft, Hébert returned to New Iberia in 2016 and opened his first hat shop on Church Alley. A year and a half later, with enough money saved and a desire to build a bigger clientele, he returned to New Orleans and opened The Cajun Hatter on bustling Magazine Street. Life (and business) was good. Customers were curious and eager to learn about his Cajun background, and Hébert found that he’d become a Cajun ambassador, as much as a hat maker. Finally when he was asked, “What makes your hats Cajun?” a light bulb went on, and he realized he needed to create a more distinctive line of hats that captured the essence of the swamps and landscape specific to his culture. To do that, he had to reconnect with his roots on a deeper level and return to Cajun Country.

In 2020, he and his wife decided to hang their sign and their hats in Lafayette, reopening The Cajun Hatter on Jefferson Street. The store has the feel of a modern-day trading post, outfitted with a moss-draped swamp scene, a wooden boat, and a large model of a red Acadian-style shack, where a nutria pelt hangs on the front post. In the distinguished seating area, Hébert offers clients a small cup of Wildcat Brothers noire rum and talks about their specifications. The 54 ready-to-wear hats lining the walls serve as a good starting point.  

Crafting Conversation-Starters

Hébert’s line includes felt hats made from beaver, nutria, rabbit and a combination of beaver with a little mink or chinchilla. For a dressy summer hat, he hand-weaves Ecuadorian straw into the classic Panama, and, more recently, into a frayed casual style like the one he calls Po’Boy. Using sturdy Guatemalan palm, which holds up to moisture, he’s also created a small line of less expensive, pre-shaped festival hats, customized with pins, bandanas and other accessories.  

Ninety percent of this hatter’s work is custom designed, and he prefers it that way. His knowledge of period clothing, color pairing and working with textures – from his days as a set costumer – has led Hébert to experiment and turn out hats like those in his collection called Louisiana Icon, with names like Atchafalaya, Dark Roux, Cayenne, Evangeline and Magnolia. 

Hébert makes hats that appear as though they have many stories to tell, revealed in their apparent wear. He achieves that rugged, “had-this-for-years” look, in part, by ironing layers of a little mud and (Atchafalaya) water onto the hat until they penetrate the felt. In a more exacting method, he sprays a solution on a light-colored hat and singes it with a butane torch to create a patina.  

Hat bands are crafted from Louisiana alligator skin, native Acadian brown cotton, vintage grosgrain and lace, hand strung beads, and they are accented with items like fleur-de-lis pins and turkey or pheasant feathers. 

Swamp Chic

There is no better example of the level of Hébert’s commitment to representing Cajun culture through his hats than the dyes used in his Shades of the Swamp collection. This is an exclusive color palette that happens once a year, and one for which customers are on a waiting list. “We source indigenous flowers and plants, boil and simmer them for their dyes, and because the colors vary from bloom to bloom and season to season, they’re never the same,” Hébert explains. 

Each year, at particular times of the summer, he and a few good friends forage the prairies for bunches of indigenous cone flowers, which render a golden dye. Maneuvering their boats deep in the Atchafalaya Basin, they collect lilac-colored water hyacinth – a bloom that Hébert refers to as the “queen of the collection,” revered for its surprising rusty-to-pale-burgundy hues. 

Also a practicing traiteur for 20 years, Hébert is deeply spiritual and shares that part of his heritage by inscribing a special intention or blessing on the inside of the sweatband of hats for friends and family – and clients, if they’d like.

His client list includes celebrities like singers Jason Aldean and Lauren Daigle, guitarist Gary Clark, Jr. and actress Allison Janney. Although he gets more excited talking about his local celebrity clients: Wayne Toups, Cedric Watson, C.C. Adcock, George Thibodeaux and Steve Riley. He’s eager to make a hat for Tommy McClain, one of the original swamp pop musicians. 

“Making my hats is a very serious thing to me,” Hébert contends. “More than a hatter, I want to be known as a contributor to Cajun preservation. If I can make Cajuns a little prouder to be Cajun by wearing my hats, then that’s my way of preservation.”