“Dear Vittorio, you may remember me…, my name is Robert Redford”, wrote the actor in a letter to a Borsalino family member in which he wished for himself the same hat that Marcello Mastroianni was wearing in Fellini's 8½. This letter epitomizes the history of the Borsalino, a hat that became an iconic garment all over the world but was produced with love and passion in Alessandria, a small town in Northern Italy.

The film narrative is told by means of a commentary, partly in voice-over and partly spoken by a shadow – a hint to the imaginary world of movies associated with the hat. While depicting the destiny of a family company, the film leads us through the creation and consolidation of a brand that owes so much to the cinema. From the interviews with direct and indirect witnesses the picture of two different worlds emerges: the small provincial town with its entrepreneurs, its workers and local historians, and on the other hand the movie star system with its celebrities and luminaries (Robert Redford, Jean Claude Carrière, Piero Tosi, Deborah Nadoolman Landis). These two worlds merge into one dialogue, whose trait d'union is in fact the Borsalino.

The hat owes its name to Giuseppe Borsalino, who in 1857, right after having obtained the title of “Qualified Master Hatmaker” in Paris, founded the first fulling plant in Alessandria together with his brother Lazzaro. Production rose fast, from 35 hats a day to 2000 at the end of the century. Giuseppe had two great intuitions: industrial mass production and the opening of new markets. He himself made many long journeys to promote his new hat, from Europe to Latin America, from the United States to New Zealand. Thanks to an efficient salesmen network, by the end of the Nineteenth century the reputation of the hat's high quality was established. Teresio Borsalino took over the company at his father’s death in 1900; still the road to success was paved with obstacles. His cousin Giovanni Battista, who felt betrayed after being pushed out of the family business, opened a rival hat company in Alessandria – “G.B. Borsalino fu Lazzaro & C.”. The two companies engaged in a commercial battle fought with manifestos and industrial films, a battle that endured until the Antica casa madre bought the Nuova Borsalino in 1938. In the first two decades of the Twentieth century Borsalino’s fame grew in every continent, boosted by ad campaigns aimed at consolidating its traditional middle-class clientele, as well as reaching the expanding cultural and movie industries. From that moment on, the company looked at new ways of brand promotion, amongst which modern industrial movies of the highest quality.

The new course of Borsalino coincided with the birth of Hollywood's star system, together with the explosion of mob films with their fascinating gangster characters. The likes of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and John Dillinger wore Borsalinos, and the movie industry looked at them for inspiration. It was through the film noir genre that the Borsalino entered into mainstream culture, becoming a synonym for “hat”. Gangsters, cops and private eyes all wore a fedora, a wide-brim hat that cast a dark and mysterious shadow on the actor's face. The Borsalino rapidly spread across all genres, appearing in adventure films, romantic comedies or musicals – it defined roles, professions, style and class. The hat became an object with unique gesture's capacity. It could trigger passions, tears or laughter. More than that: it was a purveyor of symbols that were becoming essential in the cinema industry. In 1939, at the outburst of World War II, Nino Usuelli followed his granduncle Teresio at the helm of the company: it was the worst time ever for Borsalino, which had to go through the hardships of war, the German occupation, the bombings of 1944 and foreign markets closure. But the real decline would come after the war, and mostly during the 60’s, as the cultural revolution and the onset of individualism began to replace a patriarchal and conservative society. With the economic boom and the subsequent automobile mass consumption, the hat loses its role as a daily use garment, and sales sink in few years.

The company is sold in 1979, and for Alessandria this means the downfall of generations of hatmakers. Cinema too experiences a big change in both its aesthetics and values, yet, disregarding the hat’s fate, it doesn't cast it off. Indeed, cinema will build the myth of Borsalino as we now know it.