Pachuco Supply: How Chicano Pride Fueled These Custom Hatmakers' Designs
On the Eastern edge of the Boyle Heights Arts District, near the towering underbelly of the 6th Street Viaduct, sits a black industrial warehouse. The warm, crackling sounds of a 78-rpm record of conjunto norteño legends Los Alegres de Terán echoes out from the open steel door of the building and into the street.
Inside, the studio of Pachuco Supply Co. — a family-owned custom hat company founded by Gilberto Marquez alongside wife Cinthya (branding artist) and his primo, Danny Robles (operations and hatter) — reflects firme craftsmanship and Chicano pride.
"I've always been enamored with the way hats make me feel and their connection to my father," says Marquez, who vividly recalls his father always donning a short brim lowrider fedora. "This is the preservation of my father's memory through Chicano art — the art of hatmaking."
Pachuco Supply's hats have been worn by the likes of Los Dos Carnales, La Santa Cecilia, Madonna, Kat Von D, Dolores Huerta and Edward James Olmos.
The 18-foot-high walls are adorned with a spectrum of hats — a black wide-brimmed felt hat with a center crease front pinch, a hand-woven straw hat with tan edge binding and feather accent, a silverbelly felt hat with a cattleman's crease and a chocolate brown fedora with a Virgen Maria escapulario and "smile now, cry later" pin. Chicano artwork and guitars cover the adjoining walls; industrial-looking shelves made of untreated reclaimed wood balance bottles of mezcal that complement a matching stand-alone bar. Large ornate jewel-toned rugs cover slab concrete floors. Antique leather suitcases house cactuses and plants throughout the room. The words "ponte trucha" — stay alert — aglow with vintage neon tubes.
Those words are printed on the satin lining of every hat Pachuco Supply creates. "It's a daily reminder but also something my dad used to say to me all the time, 'Ponte trucha porque 'ta cabrón (Life's tough, so be on it),'" Marquez says.
Pachuco Supply serves as a showcase of preservation, establishing themselves as an emblem of ethnic pride with artistry, vision and distinctive styling intertwined. It's this deft consciousness that captured people's attention and began attracting an audience through Instagram. Their follower count now exceeds 47,000. There, followers can find stylistic photography, cultural creativity and assertive aesthetic statements that evoke a sense of identity and hat making through a Chicano lens.
"It's very few folks that have the ability to articulate a feeling, mood, energy, etc. — Pachuco Supply has a certain vibe that I love," says Miguel "Oso" Ramirez, founding member and percussionist for La Santa Cecilia. "Gilbert and team always make me the hat that I didn't even know I wanted. They give me what I want and bring that extra element that I wasn't even aware of. It's a soul thing."
You'll find hats rife with symbolism and style — handwoven straw, fur felt and wool — individually crafted by hand and made to order. Most evident are the hats that adorn branded designs that vary from flowered and colorful to dark and morose. Other distinguishing details include artfully placed decorative embellishments like vintage one-of-a-kind Pendleton bows, bands, buckles and eye-catching pewter cast lapel pins.
Marquez, an Anaheim native, attributes his father, who passed away in 2014 from cirrhosis, for cultivating his cultural awareness and commitment to community as well as his affinity for hats. "My dad suspected that growing up in Orange County I was going to get made fun of for being Mexican," says the 35-year-old. He recalls his father taking him to a hole-in-the-wall taqueria in East Los Angeles. "He pointed at a Pancho Villa mural on the wall of the restaurant and said, 'Pancho Villa es un chingon, don't ever let anyone put you down for being Mexican because Mexicans are great.'"
Marquez grasped onto this tenet and found ways to cultivate his cultural pride. In high school, Marquez was in a politically charged punk band called Venganza, became involved with El Centro Cultural de México, and joined the Calpulli dance group performing danza Mexica (Danza Azteca).
He went on to forge a career in the bar industry as a prominent brand ambassador, consulting and running bar programs. For the last thirteen years, he bounced between California, New York and Mexico for work. When traveling, he took advantage of any extra down time to hunt antique stores, flea markets and mercados, accumulating a variety of hats and unique finds.
In 2017, while traveling in Mexico, Marquez said he came across a hatter that had a pile of hats that he deemed trash and was going to throw out. "I wanted to upcycle them so I bought them and brought them back with me to New York. I reshaped them, customized them with ribbons and ties," he says. Through a process of trial and error, Marquez honed techniques to create symmetrical hats. "I got tunnel vision and started researching how a hat was made from scratch the old school way."
Cinthya would come home from work to Marquez surrounded by hats in their small 500-square-foot studio in Borough Park, which they shared with their cat Pancho. "During the day when Cinthya was gone, I would just work on shaping hats. Then one day, I was burning a hat because I wanted to put some distress marks on it and I was like, 'Ah chingado, if I can make a line then I can draw something.'" Marquez drew a small crooked agave, "a real ugly one."
There was only one problem, the self-taught designer and hatter couldn't draw. But Cinthya could.
Marquez remembers Cinthya trying her hand at drawing something onto a hat, "It came out really nice and slowly she started getting more and more into it." With the application of the soldering iron, Cinthya's designs transmuted Pachuco's hats into fine art.
For Cinthya, Pachuco Supply reflected her own journey of reconciling cultural identity. Born in Puebla, Mexico, Cinthya moved to the U.S. as a child and grew up with aspirations of becoming a fashion designer. At the end of her senior year, she applied to the Fashion Institute of Technology but was denied admission. "They declined me because of my immigration status. It put me into a depression and I unfortunately didn't move forward with fashion," she says with a sigh. "No soy de aquí y ni soy de allá." (I'm not from here and I'm not from there). Cinthya clarifies that this took place prior to the DACA policy and she is now a DACA recipient.
Pachuco Supply was launched as a brand in 2018. Marquez explains that the name is a hat tip to his father. "Oftentimes, when I was coming downstairs or even stepping into a room ready to go out, he would always say, 'Ay, güey, pa' donde vas tan pachuco?'" (Woah, where are you going looking so hep?). "And that word to me meant self-respect, well-dressed and standing tall."
They returned to California in 2018 and continued the operation out of their garage in Orange County, "Pachuco was online only and I wouldn't even say online, I would say Instagram," Marquez says. "In the beginning, I was just making hats for myself and giving hats to friends. We didn't even know that we started something until we started getting DMs for hats."
The first hat they sold was "un sombrero de quatro pedradas" — a wide brimmed sombrero with four dents on the top (similar to a Mountie hat). "I sourced a child's vintage beaded thunderbird belt that I used as the hat band," he says. "I didn't want to sell it."
Robles' foray into becoming a hatter happened sort of by accident. "I was just planning on being the business guy. I wasn't trying to do the hats," says the 38-year-old. With an influx of orders piling up he jumped in to help. "I was literally making hats out of my kitchen and in the backyard. There were little hair fibers from the hats all over my dishes. Now, I've made hundreds, if not more, hats and I love everything about it."
With the opening of the Pachuco Supply studio in Boyle Heights back in March of this year, what started out as a showroom displaying the wares of Pachuco Supply has evolved into a multidimensional space of creative energy — a gallery of Marquez' cultural experiences growing up Chicano, fully realized and amplified.
Since launching Pachuco Supply five years ago, the company has experienced steady growth, turning out fifty hats a month; with prices starting at $350 for straw and $550 for felt. Their hats have journeyed throughout the U.S. and overseas to Ukraine, Jerusalem, Poland, Japan, Italy, London, Mexico City and Canada. Hats are mostly custom commissions, which you can dream up with the Pachuco team.
Marquez emphasizes that customizing a hat is a collective process. When a customer requested a hat as a tribute to his wedding, Marquez translated that sentiment to create an heirloom piece. "I was like, 'Do you still have the tie you wore for your wedding?' and he did," Marquez said. "I was able to use his tie to make a custom side bow for his hat."
After collaborating on a design with their customers, Pachuco Supply takes it from there. Beyond the large load-bearing wall of the Pachuco Supply studio is the workshop, where Marquez and Robles steam, pull, hand-block and form each hat. They cure for 48 hours and get cut down with a rounding jack (used to cut a brim down to a specified length) before hand embellishment, embroidery and personalized finishes are applied. If a design is requested, Cinthya will apply the final touch to create a highly personalized hat to be enjoyed for years to come.
"I love how they pay so much attention to detail. They care about the hats they create," said Art Meza, a local photographer that documents Chicano culture and bomb lowriders. "I wear their hats with pride, gotta represent that Chicano soul wherever I go." Meza recently purchased his second hat from Pachuco. A short brim with a tight pinch, sporting a "Chicano Soul" lapel pin that he provided.
A sentimentalist of his culture, Marquez recently created a few reproduction hats to celebrate and honor Época de Oro figures such as Pedro Infante and Tin-Tan. The hatter took to Instagram to create a poll asking followers which iconic Pedro Infante hat he should make and "a lot of people had strong opinions." With split votes, Pachuco ultimately decided to make both the sombrero and tejana that Infante was well known for.
Marquez also uses Pachuco Supply's Instagram platform to throw fundraiser raffles for nonprofit organizations like Border Kindness, Team Brownsville and No Us Without You by auctioning off fully customizable Pachuco Supply hats. Ensuring they stay committed to serving the community, Pachuco is looking to start a line of hats that have a percentage of the profits going to different organizations that they'd like to support.
Caught up on orders and with the next round of hats curing, Marquez has a moment to pause before his next appointment comes in later that evening. Marquez is standing at the bar which often becomes a launching pad for discussions on future goals.
"We have a lot of really great things planned for Pachuco Supply but one of my ultimate goals is to recreate the same nice, clean lowrider hat that my dad would wear," Marquez says, pointing to a framed photograph of his father hanging on the wall. He lets the thought sit, touches the crown of his hat, then takes a sip of mezcal.
