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©MALEZA hatmakers
©MALEZA hatmakers
©MALEZA hatmakers
©MALEZA hatmakers

Javier Reta Gallego & Myrte Sara Huyts

  • Maleza hatmakers
  • Milliner
  • Madrid, Spain
  • Rising Star
Javier Reta Gallego & Myrte Sara Huyts Milliner
Contact
Spanish, Dutch, English
Hours:
By appointment only
Phone:
+34 607876393
©MALEZA hatmakers

Love for hats

  • • Javier and Myrte’s create hats in felt and vegetable fibres
  • • Their pieces are unique and custom made
  • • They work with antique tools

Javier Reta Gallego and Myrte Sara Huyts are a couple whose passion is hat-making. He, a Spaniard, comes from a background in Fine Arts and graphic design. Whereas Myrte, who is Dutch, comes from a family of musicians, and studied literature and philology. It all started in 2017, in an apartment in the Madrid neighbourhood of Lavapiés. There, several factors came together: the love for hats, the desire to make something with their own hands, the desire to do something without haste, recreating in the small details and the curiosity for history, cultures and traditions. Their workshop officially opened in 2019. Currently, they make genderless hats, always worked with a wooden hat block, handmade, one by one. Most of their antique hat blocks come from a milliner in La Mancha, who lived in a small town almost 200km from Madrid.

Read the full interview

Works

  • ©MALEZA hatmakers
  • ©MALEZA hatmakers
  • ©MALEZA hatmakers
  • ©MALEZA hatmakers
  • ©MALEZA hatmakers
Photo: ©MALEZA hatmakers
Bakuri

Bakuri is an anthracite cordobés hat with a trimming made from vintage woolen fabric from Italy. This is Maleza’s attempt to design a more “urban” cordobés, eliminating the classic grosgrain ribbon and shortening the brim. This hat is made from upcycled felt. The interior is lined with homemade orange clay satin, hand stamped with a hot foil rosemary branch and black leather sweatband, sewn in by hand.

Photo: ©MALEZA hatmakers
Merzouga

Merzouga is an open crown hat, handcrafted from upcycled felt, with a burnt orange look. The trimming is made from vintage orange fabric and the inside fitted with a black leather sweatband with hand stamped hot foil logo in gold. Javier lived in Morocco for several years. The name “Merzouga” is a reference to a small Moroccan town located in the Sahara Desert, near the border with Algeria, the gateways to Erg Chebii, a huge expanse of sand dunes.

Photo: ©MALEZA hatmakers
Godot

Godot is Maleza’s extra tall open crown hat with a flat brim. It is coffee bean coloured, a rigid design with a heavily distressed look. Small tribute to the place where nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes. The hat is handcrafted from upcycled felt. The inside is made with a greyish khaki satin lining and a black leather sweatband with hand stamped hot foil logo in copper, sewn in by hand.

Photo: ©MALEZA hatmakers
Tacande

The colour of this flat crown cordobés tries to imitate the colour of rusty iron. The hat is handcrafted from upcycled felt and the trimming from distressed orange fabric. Tacande means "scorched earth" in Guanche, an extinct language that was spoken by the first known inhabitants of the Canary Islands. This hat is Maleza’s personal memory of the adventures living there, surrounded by the dark quietness of the unpredictable volcanoes.

Photo: ©MALEZA hatmakers
Lua

Lua, Hawaiian for crater, is an attempt to create a summer hat that matches almost any face. The hat is made from bao, fibres of the baobab tree, hand dyed with rubia tinctorum and nogalina. The trimming is made from recycled Tencel. Because Maleza dye their materials themselves, every Lua is different, varying in colour from light yellow to reddish brown. The trimming is treated in order to achieve a waxed and wrinkled finish characteristic to Maleza’s creations.

Enjoy an experience with Javier Reta Gallego & Myrte Sara Huyts

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