Hat manufacturing molds in the Montcapel factory, in Montazels, in Aude, January 15, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
Formerly some 6,000 workers produced hats in the upper Aude valley, today there remains only one factory, Montcapel, taken over by enthusiasts who are relaunching the headgear industry there with humility but determination. wool felt.
Dilapidated buildings, bordered by tufts of wild grass, do not reveal the industrial treasure they house, a few meters from the tumultuous flow of the Aude.
A modest banner clearly states “Chappelrie Montcapel”. But the visitor feels more like an adventurer on an “urbex” (exploration of urban wastelands) progressing with careful steps in an abandoned setting.
And yet it runs, this factory. Since January 2021, it is even “the last millinery in France to be able to make hats from start to finish, starting with the wool,” says Serge Anton, 59, production director, with pride.
A hat in the Montcapel factory, in Montazels, in Aude, January 15, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
Everything almost stopped in March 2018 with the retirement of the last two managers. At the time, the factory, which had up to 600 workers during its golden age between the wars, had only nine employees left.
“When it closed, it was the last hat shop in the valley, I said to myself, a heritage and a national know-how that we are letting go like that, it’s still a very shame,” remembers Sonia Mielke , the current president of Montcapel.
– Safeguarding heritage –
As a child, this 56-year-old Franco-Irish woman spent her holidays in this village, with her grandparents. In 2019, she, who works in telecoms and knows nothing about hats, decided, with around ten other enthusiasts, to relaunch the factory.
Montcapel, which she looks after in her free time, is reborn in the form of a collective society of cooperative interest (SCIC).
Sales director Thomas Früh wears a hat in the Montcapel hat factory, in Montazels, Aude, on January 15, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
“We started like that, at the beginning there were seven of us, today there are 300, there are companies, communities and many people who bought two or three shares to support this desire to safeguard heritage,” she explains with a twinkle in her eye.
His son, Thomas Früh, 25, sales director, takes the tour. “That’s the carding machine,” he explains near a metal behemoth, all pistons and rollers on which a carpet of white wool is spread.
“For me, it’s a mechanical gem. When it turns and each gear is perfectly adjusted, it’s magnificent,” he enthuses.
The heritage here is also human and lies in know-how, like that of Elodie Pourquié, 42 years old, “the last winder in France”, Mr. Früh is proud.
– Top of the line –
Shelves filled with hats in the Montcapel factory, in Montazels, in Aude, January 15, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
In addition to other tasks within the factory, she wraps strips of delicately carded wool around wooden domes, to form a bell whose weight she assesses by touch “within one or two grams”.
“It’s a lot of demands,” she confides. “We have to take into account the living material that is wool. When it’s humid, it’s different, we have to adapt to all that.”
From the bell to the hat, nearly twenty operations, for almost as many machines, are necessary: ”felting”, “sewing”, “clearing”, “trimming” and many other words from another age .
To give shape to its high-end wool felts, Montcapel draws from its vast collection of aluminum molds, each of which bears an evocative name: the “Texas”, the “Indiana”, the “Sacristain” or the simpler “boater”. “. In total, around 1,500 models.
Sonia Mielke, the president of the Montcapel hat factory, in Montazels, in Aude, January 15, 2024 (AFP/Ed JONES)
Three years after the production of its first hat, despite Covid, the war in Ukraine and the explosion in energy costs, Montcapel “is not giving up”, assures Sonia Mielke. The factory now sells to individuals, but mainly produces for fashion brands.
“We hope over the next two years to be in balance, finally, and sustainably,” she says, determined to take root in a heritage that seemed destined to disappear.
© 2024 AFP
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