The Franch Beret

It’s funny how when you think of France and about the French fashion, the first thing that comes into your mind is the beret.

Now let’s describe this little fashion accessory before diving into the subject. I believe everybody knows this popular type of hat, but if you need a little reminder, the beret it’s round shaped and flat hat that has a little tail pocking out from the middle. It is typically made from felted wool and it can also have a silk lining inside.

Throughout the history, the beret had quite a journey being adopted by various types of people: from artists, military to film stars. It became a fashion statement. Stick a beret on anything and it immediately looks French. But is the French beret really French?

After making a little bit of research I found out some unexpected contexts when the beret was worn, so here we are gonna look over them and maybe at the end of this article we can associate the beret to something much bigger than France, as it is an accessory worn in many parts of the world.

Noah’s Ark

It is aid that the fish beret wasn’t even invented by the French. People claim that Noah (you know him, the guy from the Bible) was the first one to invent the much popular accessory. During his travel with the ark the rain was bothering him. Looking on the ark’s floor he realised that the wool from the sheep had been trampled and it had became felt. He took it and cut a circle out of it and that’s the story of the first beret in the history.

Shepards

Doing a little time travelling from Noah’s ark we arrive in the 18th century Pyrenees. People say that the beret would come from Béarn, a region located at the base of the Pyrenees and  and borderer of Spain and the French Basque Country. At the time Shepard were usually younger boys that come from a family of farmers but do not own any land. The berets were a practical accessory but it had 2 downsides: it was smelling very bad and I would shrink after the first rain.

I can say, this claim doesn’t surprise me. After all is a hat made of wool so it is almost natural to say that the Shepards were the first ones to make the beret.

Mass Production

Getting a little closer to our days but still far in the history we are in the 1800s. In this period mass production of berets started and they became more standardised. As you can imagine, it started in the southwest of France, as they had the technology that was necessary for textile production so they began producing the hat that was very popular in the area: the beret. In 1819 it was the first factory that started producing berets and after this one, others followed.

Artists and Berets

 From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, the Parisian artists of the Left Bank adopted the beret as part of their artistic image.

Self portraits of Rembrandt show him wearing a slightly different version of the beret we know but he is not the only one. Also artists such as Monet, Cezanne, Marie Laurencin, Picasso, and many others enjoyed wearing and painting the beret.

Military

In 1889, the French military adopted a large floppy beret as part of the uniform for their elite mountain infantry called the “Chasseurs Alpins.” By the early 1920s, the beret was being used by the armed forces in Britain, after tank regiments found they were able to wear headphones over it, making it perfect for the confined space of tank cabins. Cheap to manufacture and easy to carry, their use spread to armed forces in other countries, including Australia, whose Special Forces wore a cotton beret in the Second World War.

The beret became a symbol of revolution when it was worn by the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, perhaps the most famous beret wearer in the world. Other militant groups adopted it, including the Black Panthers in the 1960s and New York’s crime-fighting Guardian Angels in the late 1970s.

Berets as a Fashion Accessory

The beret was at first an item particularly worn by men. Dressmaker Coco Chanel was the one to introduce the beret as a fashion accessory worn by women. She was known for making men’s comfortable fashion suitable for women as she believed that the women fashion was very uncomfortable. It became very popular and accessory as Greta Garbo and Brigitte Bardot wore berets in films and the beret has remained a female fashion accessory ever since. 

In 1951  Leslie Caron embodied the word gamine in “An American in Paris” wearing a slim beret and and the beret became a symbol os sophistication.

Now we know. The berets it’s not actually a French symbol as we tend to associate it with. It has traveled through time and made history in different countries, worn by all kinds of people and went from an item worn by shepherd to a fashion accessory worn by movie starts.