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While hats were initially made to protect ones head they soon became items of vanity and fashion. Hats designated the people who wore them as members of certain groups and emphasized a person's societal rank. You weren't anybody if you did not wear one. Well, those times are gone and things have almost turned to their opposite. While in former times any small town had a hat maker and factories were producing hats in numbers, the remaining ones today struggle to survive. Hats are currently not in fashion.
If anything then the modern factories with highly automated production lines have survived. The old masters of the trade who are proficient in the old hand-craft have become rare. Gottfried Kininger and his small business has survived the technological revolution. He does everything himself and performs his work no different than others 100 years before him.
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