A feather in Belgium’s cap
Caps used to be common items out on the streets, and now they’ve had a veritable renaissance. The ones that caught our eye? They’ve got a label that says ‘Made in Belgium’.
City Sport, a nearly 125-year-old cap making company based in Ardooie (in the province of West Flanders, just northeast of Roeselare) is enjoying a revival of sorts.
Whether it was the popular television show Peaky Blinders or just celebrities spotted wearing them, caps are back, and the City Sport caps in particular are in high demand. Fans include David Beckham and Lenny Kravitz and the late Arno.
The company was founded by Victor Declercq and his wife Marie Olivier in 1896, and the business is still family-run more than a century and three generations later.
Not only is it family-run, but as we mentioned above, they’re made in Belgium, in an Ardooie atelier with a good three dozen artisans working hard at the sewing machines.
According to fourth-generation Tom Declercq, a cap used to be something you wore in the winter against the cold, but it’s become a real “fashion item” as of late.
Hats off to this artisanal Belgian company!