R. Cappelli reinvents the hat game in Greenville by marrying fashion and festivities
With hats, the possibilities for trends and innovation are never-ending—a few keyboard clicks opens the hatbox on everything from cashmere berets and wool fedoras to trucker hats and double-beer-can-holding drinking helmets. Whether for fashion or function, humankind has been donning material atop our heads since Iceman Ötzi strapped on a bearskin cap.
René Hutchisson has added another layer to the hat selection process, one that involves friends, food, and a flute of champagne, with R. Cappelli Handmade Hats. “We get the most activity through parties,” the hatmaker explains. “Wine and cheese nights, team-building events, girls’ night out. When people walk in the shop, they just love it.”
The Florida native opened her shop in the Village of West Greenville in spring of 2024. A couple of years earlier, she’d made a hat from scrap fabric, left over from a 30-year career in the fashion industry. With word-of-mouth marketing and a couple of local pop-ups, the sleeper business took over her home. Her husband eventually said it was time to move out . . . the business that is. “It had really gotten out of control,” Hutchisson reveals with a laugh. “Now, the shop offers 600 fabrics with eight different styles of hats. Every person who comes in here has a unique story to tell and they want a design that’s fun and represents that.”
R. Cappelli Styles
R. Cappelli hats are soft, chic, and esasily packed for travel. Six of the styles are reversible, as Hutchisson wanted hats that could be worn for fine dining or a day at the beach. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, the woman who once dressed Steven Tyler and Bill Cosby now caps the Upstate, selling more than 1,200 hats. “The most fun we’ve had here was a team-building event for a business,” she shares. “It was all men—engineers and accountants—and I was a bit hesitant as the shop is a bit feminine. But they were hilarious, trying on every hat in the store, and we do have men’s fabrics and styles.”
Online sales are growing, but the milliner encourages folks to come visit, saying selecting a hat is as much about the shopping as the chapeau. “Nothing compares to this,” she explains. “I get a chuckle out of people who visit and say, ‘I’m not a hat person.’ Ninety percent of the time they end up leaving with at least one hat. It just means they haven’t found the right one.” The right designer, with the right style and fabric? It’s hard to top that.
R. Cappelli, 1211 Pendleton St., Ste. 101, Greenville, R-Cappelli.com
A Heads-up
Cappelli is Italian for “hat.” René Hutchisson and her husband love traveling in Italy.
Cappelli’s best-seller is the 3-inch brim reversible hat.
