Located in the historic Beverly neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

Optimo’s headquarters merges its design, operations and production under one roof inside a decommissioned firehouse built a century ago.

To create a space that reflects our rigorous ethos of craftsmanship, authenticity and timeless luxury, we engaged Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the iconic Chicago architectural firm, whose values, approach to design with integrity and purpose align with our own. “Our intention was to create an exceptional factory to produce an exceptional product.”

Our Headquarters is a working museum of hatmaking tools and equipment, much of it dating back more than 100 years. Our adventures in curating have resulted in a rare collection of highly functional tools, machines and hat molds, each with its own unique history and provenance. We combine production techniques that entail technologies invented in the late 1800s through the 1950s, alongside modern, state-of-the-art machinery to support our passionate quest to preserve refine and evolve the art of hatmaking