The "conformateur" and its demonstration

For more than a century, hat maintenance was the work of hat-retailers. Before running own - mostly well-situaded - premises, most of them where employed by hat-manufacturies, which enabled them to further maintain, clean, transform, if not resize hats of their clients.

Nowadays, very few of them still offer the traditional hatter's after-sales service, true "cock a snook" to hyper-consumption society.

A entire showcase is deemed to hat-retailers instruments, among these the most spectacular so called "conformateur". Invented in France in 1852 by Mr. Allié-Maillard, it served for more than a century to reduce head-shape in a card which then enabled to adapt precisaly any hard hat (like bowlers, boaters, top-hats ...) to its destinated head.