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Panama hats
巴拿马草帽
Hold onto your headwear
守住你的帽子
Ecuador makes them and wants you to know it
厄瓜多尔制造了这种帽子并希望你去了解它
HATS have been woven in and around Montecristi, a hillside town in Ecuador near the Pacific Ocean, since as long ago as the 17th century. Locally the cream-coloured titfers, which are made from the soft fibres of a palm-like plant, are called toquilla-straw hats. To the rest of the world, however, they are known as Panama hats. Now Ecuador wants to reclaim the brand.
蒙特克里斯蒂是厄瓜多尔的一座山地小镇，位于太平洋附近。从17世纪开始，这座小镇及其周边就开始编织帽子了。这种帽子是淡黄色的，用一种叫多基利亚的棕榈状植物的柔软纤维编织而成，当地人称它为多基利亚草帽。但对于世界其它地方的人来说，这种帽子被称为巴拿马草帽。如今厄瓜多尔希望收回这个牌子。
The hats became known as “Panamas” because that was where they were primarily sold to international markets. By the 1840s Ecuadorean entrepreneurs were sending them to Panama in the tens of thousands. Prospective gold-diggers bought them as they crossed the isthmus on their way to California. Theodore Roosevelt helped make them fashionable on a visit, in November 1906, to see the construction of the canal.
这种帽子被称为“巴拿马帽”是因为它最初销售的国际市场是巴拿马。在19世纪40年代之前厄瓜多尔企业家们将数以万计的帽子运往巴拿马。抱着期望的淘金者们在穿越地峡去往加州时购买这种帽子。西奥多·罗斯福在1906年访问参观巴拿马运河建筑情况时戴着这种帽子，促进了它的流行。
The hats fell out of favour in the second half of the 20th century, but data from Ecuador's Central Bank suggest demand is rising. The country exported finished hats worth $6m in 2013, up from a piffling $517,000 in 2003. The headwear goes mostly to Italy, Britain and the United States, where they can fetch anything from a few dollars to several thousand for the most intricate designs. According to Andrés Ycaza of the Ecuadorean Intellectual Property Institute, a skilled weaver will earn only about $800 for a hat worth close to $2,000, which can take months to make. Without a premium attached to its Ecuadorean origins, it is hard to drive prices higher.
这种帽子在20世纪后期开始失宠，但厄瓜多尔中央银行的资料表明需求仍在增长。2013年国家贸易出口的成品帽子总价值为六百万美元，而2003年仅为517,000美元。这种帽子主要售往意大利、英国和美国，在那里它们的价格不等，最低只有几美元，而最精细复杂的款式可以达到几千美元。据厄瓜多尔知识产权协会的安德列·伊卡萨称，一个熟练的编织工人编织一顶价值接近2000美元的帽子需要数月时间，而他从中只能挣到800美元。因为厄瓜多尔来源地不会为帽子带来额外价值，因此价格很难增高。
Mr Ycaza's answer is to try and promote the hat's roots. In 2012 the weaving of the toquillahat won a place on UNESCO's list of “intangible cultural heritage”. Now IEPI is trying to gain protected designation-of-origin status for the Montecristi hat in trade negotiations with the European Union, which protects everything from Roquefort cheese to Isle of Man Queenies, a type of scallop. “This is the moment to make it known to the entire world that the Montecristi hat is made here in Ecuador,” says Mr Ycaza.
伊卡萨给出的解决方案就是尝试发扬帽子的产地。2012年这种手工编织的多基利亚草帽还被列入联合国教科文组织人类非物质文化遗产名录。如今IEPI正试图在与欧盟的商业谈判中为蒙特克里斯蒂的帽子争取原产地名称保护制度，这种制度保护一切东西，如曼岛奎尼扇贝和洛克福羊乳干酪。“是时候让全世界都知道蒙特克里斯蒂帽子产地是厄瓜多尔了，”伊卡萨说。
The idea hasn't won universal support. Although Montecristi is home to 500 or so weavers, the city of Cuenca in the southern Andes produces and exports most finished toquilla hats. There they worry that the Montecristi brand won't much help them. “If a weaver from Manabí [Montecristi's home province] for whichever reason moves to Cuenca, the hat he makes in Cuenca isn't going to be worse than the one he weaves in Manab,” says Gabriela Molina of Homero Ortega, a family-owned hatmaker.
这个想法没有获得广泛支持。尽管蒙特克里斯蒂是500多名手工编织艺人的家乡，南安第斯山脉的城市昆卡也制造和出口大量成品多基利亚草帽，他们担忧蒙特克里斯蒂品牌对他们没什么帮助。“如果一名来自马纳比省（蒙特克里斯蒂的所属省）的手工编织艺人迁移到了昆卡，他在昆卡制作的帽子不会比在马纳比制作的差，”家族制帽商奥梅罗·奥特加的加夫列拉·莫利纳说。
