It requires instruction in the specific technique, access to the appropriate materials, and practice over time to develop the competence to produce a well-made hat.

The production of woven hats was, in the coastal Tlingit tradition, typically associated with women who specialized in the craft, and their production could be a mark of status and wealth in a social system where elaborately decorated goods carried significant prestige value.

A plain woven hat — without the elaborate painted or woven designs that marked the most prestigious coastal garments — was a functional object.

But even a plain woven hat, if it was of coastal manufacture, was an object that had come from a specific cultural context, made by specific hands, using specific techniques.