At Real Deal Brazil, We're all about the tarp

A few years back, Mr. P., as we affectionately call the founder of our little Greenville, N.C., company, was traveling along the coast of his beloved Brazil when he spied something intriguing in one of the local markets there: Wide-brimmed hats handcrafted out of wonderfully weathered old cotton canvas, with heavy stitching, shifts in color, fraying, stains, rips, punctures, patches and even occasional ink marks. Mr. P. immediately began inquiring about the unusual hats, learning that their material was actually old canvas tarps discarded by Brazilian trucking companies after lengthy use as protection for freight. A romantic in the broadest sense of the word, Mr. P. was instantly as hooked by the story as he had been by the hats themselves.