Beret

Beret (pronounced buh-rey)

A soft, visor-less cap, made usually of a soft wool material or felt, styled with a close-fitting headband and a wide, round top, often with a tab at the center.

1827: From the French béret (round, flat, woolen cap), from the dialectal form béarn, from the Occitan (Gascon) & Old Provençal berret (cap), from the Medieval Latin birrettum (a flat woollen cap that was worn by peasants), a diminutive of the Late Latin birrus (a large hooded cloak), a word perhaps of Gaulish origin but the ultimate root probably was the Proto-Celtic birros (short) and related to the Welsh byr and the Middle Irish berr.  The similar clerical variation is called a biretta and in Spanish, the spelling is boina.  Some military units are associated with the color of their berets (green berets; blue berets etc).  Beret is a noun; the noun plural is berets,

A rendering of the famous photograph of Che Guevara (1928–1967) at the La Coubre memorial service by Alberto Korda (1928-2001), 5 March 1960.

Long culturally associated with France, its popularity as a fashion-piece may bounce around but the beret has never gone away, examples found by archaeologists in bronze age tombs and the headwear has appeared in art since Antiquity, notable especially in European sculpture from the twelfth century.  The floppiness certainly varied, a quality seemingly close to a direct relationship with size, suggesting all were made, as they appeared, from felt or some material with  similar properties.  One of the oldest forms of processed cloth, felt was a serendipitous creation by shepherds who, for warmth and comfort, filled their shoes with tufts of wool; as they walked and worked, they sweated and felt was made by the pressure of the foot pressing the the wool against the leather.  Berets were adopted first by Basque peasants, then royalty, then the military and then artists but in the twentieth century, they gained an anti-establishment association, influenced by French existentialists and the famous photograph of Che Guevara.

Lindsay Lohan in beret, promotional image for Saturday Night Live, episode 37-16, March 2012.

The military, the counterculture and the fashionistas have shared the once humble cap since.  One aspect of it however proved as vulnerable as any object of mass-manufacture to the arithmetic of unit-labour costs and world trade.  In France, early in the post-war years, there had been fifteen beret factories in the district of Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the Pyrénées where most French berets were made yet by the late 1990s, there was but one and it catered for only for the upper reaches of the market, supplying those few who simply didn’t wear clothes made east of Suez and Laulhère is the last remaining historic beret-maker still operating in France.  Dating from 1840 when the Laulhère family opened its first factory, such was the struggle to survive the national textile industry crisis as well as the erosion of its market by low-priced products of dubious quality that in 2013 the decision was taken by Laulhère finally to end production.  However, just as Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969) had une certain idée de la France, upon hearing the news of the closure, the industry decided there was une certaine idée de la mode française and a rescue package was organized by the Gascon-based Cargo Group and its sister company, Blancq-Olibet.  In a press release issued almost immediately after the new broke, Cargo Group confirmed they had acted because the beret was “…such an important part of our history and patrimoine (cultural heritage).  Clearly, the beret is as important to the French as the baguette, and croissant, both items being traditional products which have survived to co-exist with cheaper, industrially manufactured "imitations".  Cargo’s business model was simultaneously to use Laulhère’s expertise and skilled workforce to introduce new, more modern lines but maintain the availability of the traditional styles and it appears to have been successful, the classic berets still on sale.  It’s one of those dependable industry staples which can just about every year be promoted by a label, publication or stylist as one of the trends to watch in the next season.  Unlike something like the polka-dot which tends to be cyclical with sometimes a decade between spikes, the classic, timeless beret is always there, running the gamut from revolutionary chic to French-girl accessory, something able to be worn in all four seasons and is the ultimate mix & match fall-back; it can work with spots or stripes and vivid or subdued solids.  It's rare that a catwalk doesn't include at least one beret.

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (b 1943) in beret on the cover of Hejira (1976), the image a collage of photographs by Dr Norman Seeff (b 1939) and Joel Bernstein (b 1952).

Hejira is one of the less frequently used transliterations (the others being Hijrah, Hidjra & Hegira) of the Arabic هِجْرَة (hijra) (departure, exodus), a word used to refer to the Prophet Muhammad’s (circa 570-632) flight with his companions in 622 from Mecca to Medina.  It was from the verb هَجَرَ (hajara) (emigrate, to abandon).  When interviewed, Ms Mitchell said she was attracted to the word because of the “attractiveness” of the “dangling j”; presumably, musicians “hear” in words musical properties in the way a synesthete might “see” colors.

Bridget Bardot (b 1934) in beret.

The beret certainly has a long history, floppy head coverings appearing in archaeological record of the Early Bronze Age (circa 3300-2000 BC) and they have remained a feature in European clothing ever since.  At least partially, this was technological determinism in action: felt was the material constantly used and, being non-woven, it is one of the easiest materials to produce without complex machinery or skills.  Felt is made by matting and pressing wet natural fibres (classically wool) and its is famously versatile and durable, peasants favouring it for the linings of jackets, footwear and of course hats, as valued for its warmth as its capacity to resist moisture.  In the severe Russian winter of 1941-1942, one of the most prized possessions to be taken by the Germans from dead or captured Red Army soldiers were their felt-lined boots.  Because of the hubristic assumption the Russians would be defeated before the onset of winter, the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) had made little attempt to build-up stocks of suitable clothing but, even had they been more cautious, there was nothing in their inventory to match the effectiveness of the Soviet felt-lined boot.  By the seventeenth century, black felt hats (less a fashion choice than it simply being the most simple colour to produce) were virtually an item or uniform among the French working class, farmers and artisans although it wasn’t until 1827 the industry coined béret, from the Medieval Latin birretum (a flat woollen cap worn by peasants).

Bridget Bardot and Andre Bourvil (1917-1970) in Le Trou Normand (Crazy for Love, 1952); it was her first feature film.

This being pre-EEC (European Economic Community (1957), the predecessor of the European Union (1993)) Europe, the beret of course became a political statement and as tensions grew in the mid-nineteenth century between France & Spain, the fashion lines were drawn: French berets were blue and Spanish red although in a gesture which might have pleased the Marxists, the working class everywhere continue to wear black although they were drawn by the price rather than international solidarity (although that too vindicates Marxist economic theory).  However, it’s from the early twentieth century that historians of fashion trace the ascent of the black beret as an essentially classless chic accessory which could be worn by men & women alike although such are the memories of Bridget Bardot and Catherine Deneuve (b 1943) that about the only men remembered for their berets are revolutionaries, Che Guevara, the Black Panthers and such.  One political aspect of the beret definitely is a myth: it’s not true the Nazis banned the hat during the occupation of France (1940-1944).  The origin of that tale seems to lie in the publication in the 1970s of a number of propaganda suggestions by the SOE (Special Operations Executive, the UK government's department of “dirty tricks” with a mandate to “set Europe ablaze”), one of which was to spread in France the story the Germans were going to “ban the beret”, something with some basis in fact because there was, briefly, a local campaign to deprive Alsatians of the hat, on the basis it was a (Basque) manifestation of Frenchness.  Strange as it sounds, such things had been done before, the UK parliament in 1746 responding to the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1745 by passing the Dress Act which in Scotland restricted the wearing of tartan.  Quickly, Berlin put a stop to the wacky scheme and there's no evidence the SOE's plan was ever used although the organization remained active in the disinformation business.  One curiosity of the crackdown on berets was it didn't extend to onion sellers although that wasn't enough to save Robert Wagner (1895–1946; civil administrator of Alsace during the Nazi occupation) who, an unrepentant Nazi to the end, was sentenced to death by a French court and executed.