#184: World Cup City - Panama 🇵🇦
Day 18: Panamania
Welcome to an ongoing Brussels Notes series exploring the 48 participating countries of the 2026 World Cup, without leaving Brussels. Read the explainer, and then subscribe.
PANAMA v Ghana
Lemesre, Rue de l’Ecuyer 27, 1000 Bruxelles
The shop attendant at Lemesre’s was frowning, not at me but at my forehead. “Vous avez une grosse tête,” he said. Tell me something I don’t know, I thought.
When we were children, a neighbourhood friend once described my head as like a “hairy melon”. It’s why, despite my best efforts, I have never really been a Hat Guy; I just never could find one that fit, the “one size fits all” tag on a woollen beanie more mockery than helpful size guide, and every baseball cap I own is usually fastened to the very last snapback buttons. Not that I didn’t try. There are many photographs out there, some of them even on the internet, featuring me in a variety of questionable millinery - straw trilbys, flannel flatcaps, and beanies decorated with a yellow-and-red flame motif. In recent years, I have adopted the more conservative “cordoruy-cap-in-summer-Uniqlo-beanie-in-winter” combination, and approach - aligned to the aforementioned size issue - which has given me little cause to visit any of Brussels’ surprisingly numerous hat shops. But I made an exception for Lemesre’s.
You might have walked past the shop a hundred times and not noticed it; I certainly didn’t, or at least not consciously, always in a hurry to the public library across the street, Bruxelles-Centrale up the hill, or the Brouckere metro station on on Place de la Monnaie. But it’s there alright, its lilac facade on the corner of Rue de l’Ecuyer 27 and Rue de la Fourche often half-covered by a rusted metal safety grille. In the windows are black-and-white photos of Jimmy Stewart and Steve McQueen advertising Stetsons, a display of women’s hats, one whole window taken up by a variety of baseball caps in classic Americana designs, and in one window a hatstand showcasing what I was really on the look-out for: crisp, off-white Panama hats with the thick black fabric band above the rim and a little button pinned to them proclaiming them to be “Original Panama Hat”.
The shop was empty when I entered through the creaking wooden front door. I could immediately see that Lemesre’s was a little gem of a place, a throwback to a previous, now mostly-vanished, era of retail. Here was a shop that sold hats (as well as the odd umbrella), has been selling hats for almost 150 years, and will continue selling hats - men’s hats, women’s hats, big hats, small hats, peaked hats, round hats, flat hats, hats for the summer, and hats for the winter, casual hats and wedding hats, and Panama hats - for as long as people continue to need or want to wear hats.
Beyond the plethora of hats hanging in various states of order around the shop, it was the smell of the place I noticed most. It smelled like what I imagine an old tailor’s to smell like, musty, of leather and deep time. It was decorated in wooden wall panelling and soft quiet carpets, with hats displayed on stalks, umbrellas by the door, and mirrors everywhere. As I was mooching around by myself, a voice came from a hidden room up a set of stairs, shouting down to say that it would be with me presently. It belonged to a friendly, unobtrusive but helpful man, who was himself wearing a brown flatcap-type hat with the tag still hanging off the back.
I didn’t want to start with the Panama hat display, they looked too pristine to disturb, so I focused on the pile of round, peakless docker hats beside them. He started me off with a medium, which I indulged him, and then moved onto a large. It was only after he’d rummaged around in the display shelves for an extra-large that he was forced to concede, “You have a big head.” I conceded that he was right, I did have an unexpectedly large head, and tried on the outsized grey example he handed me. It fit snugly, as I expected it might, and he was pleased. Taking it off I had a sneak at the price tag and kept a straight face. I looked over at the Panama hats and thought, if I need an XL of one of those, it would be so big as to look halfway towards a sombrero. I also had a faint childhood memory of my dad wearing something similar, and I did not want to go down that road.
I explained to the man that I would have to think about it, it was the end of the fiscal month after all, and made my excuses to leave, with my wallet if not my dignity intact.
Postscript for the all the millinophiles read - YES I KNOW PANAMA HATS COME FROM ECUADOR.
Tomorrow, we’re off to Asia again...
Thanks for reading - I’m writer Eoghan Walsh and this is my weekly free-to-subscribe newsletter about life in Brussels. If you like it and you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here!
I had a good laugh reading this piece. I never noticed you had such a big head but will certainly check it out the next time I see you