Yves Coppens

Yves Coppens (1934, Morbihan) is a French anthropologist. He graduated from the University of Rennes. He has studied ancient hominids and has had multiple published works on this topic, and has also produced a film.

Yves Coppens visits the Laulhere factory in Oloron Sainte Marie

Coppens is one of the co-discoverers of Lucy along with Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb, although Richard Dawkins makes the following observation in The Ancestor's Tale: "Incidentally, I don't know what to make of the fact that in his native France, Yves Coppens is widely cited as the discoverer of Lucy, even as the 'father' of Lucy. In the English-speaking world, this important discovery is universally attributed to Donald Johanson." This confusion covers the fact that that Coppens was the director of the Hadar expedition and so responsible for the all of the expedition's finds, whereas Donald Johanson was participant in the expedition and the one to actually chance on Lucy's skeleton.

Laulhere director René  Renda with Yves Coppens

The "Rift Valley theory", proposed and supported by the Dutch primatologist Adriaan Kortlandt, became better known when it was later espoused and renamed by Coppens as the "East Side Story". However this paradigm has been challenged by the discovery by Michel Brunet' s team of Australopithecus bahrelghazali (Abel) and Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumaï) in Chad (2 500 km to west rift walley. The asteroid 172850 Coppens is named in his honour.

Conrad Felixmüller

Conrad Felixmüller (21 May 1897 – 24 March 1977) was a German expressionist painter. Born in Dresden as Conrad Felix Müller, he chose Felixmüller as his nom d'artiste.

One of the youngest members of the New Objectivity movement, Felixmüller was also a member of the Communist Party of Germany. His paintings often deal with the social realities of Germany's Weimar Republic. He was mentor to German expressionist, Otto Dix. From 1949 to 1962 he taught at the University of Halle. He died in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf.

Bargains at South Pacific Berets!

A stock take and tidy up at South Pacific Berets resulted in a few good bargains in specific sizes. 

Lucky those who share my size 59! I have a number of size 59 Bérets Bakarra in 10.5 pouces (29cm) and Bérets Bakarra DeLuxe in 9.5 pouces (267mm) in stock still. Somehow, I miscalculated when ordering these berets last year and got far too many in size 59. These models won't be re-stocked and these two labels are the very last available.Top quality berets in their range; the Bakarra one of the best medium range berets and the DeLuxe among the best berets Blancq-Olibet makes. Only in size 59, at a bargain price of $ 55.00 and $ 62.50 respectively.

The Béret Berrueta is made especially for outdoors enthusiasts and hunters - a 10 or 10.5pouces (28 or 29cm) beret in loden-green with it's own embroidered Berrueta label. A hard to find beret, even in France. These berets come in Blancq-Olibets 565 quality range. This is the same beret as used by the officers of the Belgian military regiment of Chasseurs Ardennais.

A beautifully finished beret, impermeable of course and only two available: one in size 59 (10p) and one in size 60 (10.5p) at a reduced cost of $ 65.00.

All available here, in the One-Off-Section!

Ramon Sender Barayón

Ramon Sender Barayón (1934, Madrid, Spain) is a composer, visual artist and writer. He was the co-founder, with Morton Subotnick of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1962.

In January, 1966, he co-produced the Trips Festival, with Ken Kesey and Stewart Brand, a three-day event that, in conjunction with The Merry Pranksters, brought together the nascent hippie movement for the first time.

Sender is also a visual artist whose visual works are sampled on his web site and in a book, "Barayon", a Catalog of Prints, Drawings, Original Art by Ramon Sender Barayon, 2009. The book is based on a one man show at the Gallery Sanchez in 2008.

After the death of Sender’s daughter ‘Xavie’ in 1989, he founded the Peregrine Foundation (for people "living in or exiting from experimental social groups"). He was the administrator of the foundation until 1999.
Sender identifies himself as a "transcendental, post-monotheist hippie pagan sunworshipper, with one foot planted in the nondual teaching of Candice O'Denver and the other in the Archaic Revival culture"

Ilja Gort

In 1994, Dutchman Ilja Gort saw his dream come true when he bought the rundown but promising Château de la Garde. In ten years time he managed to transform the ramshackle castle into a fully operational wine castle with both modern vinification equipment as well as traditional French oak barrels.

From 2001, he has been writing and publishing books on his life as a vintner, which he describes as both relentlessly grueling and exquisitely rewarding.

In 2008, Ilja Gort had his nose insured with Lloyds of London for the sum of 5 million Euro.

Mademoiselle Marie

Mademoiselle Marie (often shortened to Mlle. Marie) is the name of a fictional character appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. She first appeared in Star Spangled War Stories #84 (August 1959), and was created by Robert Kanigher and Jerry Grandenetti.

Marie (last name not given) started out as an ordinary French farm girl, listening avidly to war stories told by her father and grandfather. By the time she grew up, her country was again in need of heroes, as the Nazis had marched in and taken over. She and her father joined the Resistance, but his participation was short-lived. In fact, he died in her arms in their very first story, leaving her the de facto commander of their unit. She proved to be more-or-less typical of fictional French Resistance women — tough as nails or soft as silk, depending on what would best advance her cause.

In Pre-Crisis continuity it was revealed that Marie had a daughter named Julia Remarque. The father of her child was Batman's butler Alfred Pennyworth, who was an intelligence agent in France during the war. Julia no longer exists in the current DC Comics continuity.

Boinas Elosegui

Video showing the production process at Boinas Elosegui in Tolosa, Spain.

Amadeo de Souza, con boina

Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887 – 1918) was a Portuguese artist.

Amadeo was born in Mancelos, a parish of Amarante. At the age of 18, he entered the Superior School of Fine Arts of Lisbon and one year later (on his 19th birthday) he went to Paris, where he intended to continue his studies but soon quit the architecture course and started studying painting. By then, he was especially experienced in caricatures. 

In 1913, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso participated in two seminal exhibitions: the Armory Show in the USA, that travelled to New York City, Boston, and Chicago, and the Erste Deutsche Herbstsalon at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, Germany, directed by Herwarth Walden. Both exhibitions presented modern art to a public that was still not used to it.

In 1925, a retrospective exhibition in France of the painter’s artwork was well received by the public and critics. Ten years later in Portugal, an award was created to distinguish modern painters: the Souza-Cardoso prize.

Blaise Cendrars, always with Beret

Frédéric-Louis Sauser (September 1, 1887 – January 21, 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European modernist movement.

In 1904, he left school due to poor performance and began an apprenticeship with a Swiss watchmaker in Russia. While living in St. Petersburg, he began to write, thanks to the encouragement of R.R., a librarian at the National Library of Russia. There he wrote the poem, "La Légende de Novagorode".

In 1907, Sauser returned to Switzerland, where he studied medicine at the University of Berne. During this period, he wrote his first verified poems, Séquences, influenced by Remy de Gourmont's Le Latin mystique. Cendrars was the first exponent of Modernism in European poetry. 

His writing career was interrupted by World War I. When it began, he and the Italian writer Ricciotto Canudo appealed to other foreign artists to join the French army. He joined the French Foreign Legion. He was sent to the front line in the Somme where from mid-December 1914 until February 1915, he was in the line at Frise (La Grenouillère and Bois de la Vache). He described this war experience in the books La Main coupée (The severed hand) and J'ai tué (I have killed). It was during the attacks in Champagne in September 1915 that Cendrars lost his right arm and was discharged from the army.

After the war, Cendrars became involved in the movie industry in Italy, France, and the United States. Needing to generate more income, after 1925 he stopped publishing poetry and concentrated on novels and short stories.

Cendrars continued to be active in the Paris artistic community, encouraging younger artists and writing about them. He stayed in Paris during World War II and the German occupation. In Occupied France, the Gestapo listed Cendrars as a Jewish writer of "French expression," but he was not deported. His youngest son was killed in an accident while escorting American planes in Morocco.

In 1950, Cendrars settled down on the rue Jean-Dolent in Paris, across from the La Santé Prison. There he collaborated frequently with Radiodiffusion Française. He finally published again in 1956. The novel, Emmène-moi au bout du monde !…, was his last work before he suffered a stroke in 1957. 
He died in 1961.

Joaquim Pereira Teixeira, con boina

Joaquim Pereira Teixeira de Vasconcelos (2 November 1877, Amarante Municipality, Portugal - 14 December 1952, Gatão, Portugal), better known by his pen name Teixeira de Pascoaes, was a Portuguese poet. 

Teixeira has been nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

António Alves Redol, con boina

António Alves Redol (1911 - 1969) was one of the most influential Portuguese neorealist writers.
Redol was born in Vila Franca de Xira and, at the age of 15 he started publishing articles in the local weekly newspaper Vida Ribatejana. In 1928 Redol travelled to Angola (a Portuguese colony at the time), where he stayed for three years. His stay in Angola was mainly unfruitful but influenced his world view, which later became visible in his literature.

In 1936 Redol publishes his first collaboration with O Diabo, the short story Kangondo, set in an African ambiance. He will continue writing chronicles and tales, identifying himself with the social issues of his region, Ribatejo. 
Redol got involved the agricultural workers, like the workers in the rice fields near the Tagus river, and listened to their stories and experiences.

In the beginning of the 1940s he joins the Portuguese Communist Party, which was then illegal. Alves Redol is arrested in May 1944, but in November 1945 he participates in the Central Committee of the Movement of Democratic Unity (Movimento de Unidade Democrática (M.U.D.)) for which he actively participates in the campaigns for the fake elections held by the Salazar regime.

In 1947 he is nominated Secretary-General of the Portuguese section of the International PEN. In 1948 he participates in the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace, in Wrocław, Poland.

His novel Horizonte Cerrado (1948) is the first volume of a trilogy concerning the Portuguese winemaking region of Douro. Os Homens e as Sombras (1951) and Vindima de Sangue (1953) complete the so-called Portuguese wine cicle.

A Barca dos Sete Lemes was translated into the English language by Linton Lomas Barrett and published as A Man with Seven Names by Knopf in 1964.
Alves Redol died in Lisbon, in 1969.

Redol's statue, that caused an outcry when unveiled - apart from his beret, he is nude (though you're never really nude with a beret on your head...)

Painter Jarji Balanchivadze

Jarji Balanchivadze, nephew of George Balanchine, the renowned choreographer. Jarji, pictured with his family, is a Georgian composer and painter.

His apartment has not changed since the days when Stravinsky and Shostakovich used to meet there.

Benedict Joseph Groeschel, with Beret

Benedict Joseph Groeschel, C.F.R. (born July 23, 1933) is a Catholic priest, retreat master, author, psychologist, activist and former host of the television talk program Sunday Night Prime, which is broadcast on the Eternal Word Television Network. He has also hosted several serial religious specials in addition to Sunday Night Prime. He is the founder of the Office for Spiritual Development for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York as well as a former associate director of Trinity Retreat and a former executive director of the St. Francis House. He is professor of pastoral psychology at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York and an adjunct professor at the Institute for Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia. He is one of the founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

In 1960, Groeschel became the chaplain for the Children’s Village, a Dobbs Ferry, New York based facility for emotionally disturbed children. In 1965, he joined the staff of St. Joseph's Seminary and has taught classes at Fordham University, Iona College and Maryknoll Seminary. In 1967, he founded The St. Francis House in Brooklyn, New York, which provides a safe haven for young men looking for a new start in life. The results of his counseling, teaching ability and the manner in which he treated his subjects attracted the attention of many, including Terence Cooke, then Archbishop of New York. In 1974, at the request of Cardinal Cooke, he founded the Trinity Retreat in Larchmont, New York, which provides spiritual direction and retreats for clergy.

Groeschel made controversial comments in a 2012 interview published by the National Catholic Register related to the sexual abuse of children by priests: "Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer."  He later apologized for his words. 

Rebellion in Patagonia, with Berets, naturally

Rebellion in Patagonia (La Patagonia rebelde) is a 1974 Argentine drama-historical film directed by Héctor Olivera and starring Héctor Alterio, Luis Brandoni, José Soriano and Federico Luppi. It was written by Olivera with Osvaldo Bayer and Fernando Ayala, based on Osvaldo Bayer's renowned novel Los Vengadores de la Patagonia Trágica ("The Avengers of Tragic Patagonia"), which was based upon the military suppression of anarchist union movements in Santa Cruz Province in the early 1920s.

According to a TV interview with the author of the novel, in order to film a scene with a workers protest, the director asked the Santa Cruz governor Jorge Cepernic for extras. The governor then asked the Juventud Peronista (Peronist Youth) to take part. Among those people was Néstor Kirchner, the former President of Argentina (and deceased husband of the present President Cristina Kirchner). 

It was entered into the 24th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear.

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (1924 – 1978), aka Leo Towers and as Babsy, was an Argentine film director, producer and screenwriter. Born as Leopoldo Torres Nilsson (he later changed his paternal surname from Torres to Torre) was the son of Argentine pioneer film director Leopoldo Torres Ríos, with whom he collaborated between 1939 and 1949. He debuted in 1947 with the short El muro. His mother was an Argentinian citizen of Swedish descent.

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (left) with Alfredo Alcón during the filming of El Santo de la Espada (1970)

Torre Nilsson's first full-length film, El crimen de Oribe (1950), was an adaptation of Adolfo Bioy Casares's novel El perjurio de la nieve. In 1954 he directed Días de odio, based on Jorge Luis Borges's short story Emma Zunz. Güemes: la tierra en armas (1971), about Martín Miguel de Güemes, was entered into the 7th Moscow International Film Festival. His 1973 film Los siete locos won the Silver Bear at the 23rd Berlin International Film Festival
He is acknowledged as the first Argentine film director to be critically acclaimed outside the country, making Argentina's film production known in important international festivals. He died of cancer in his native Buenos Aires in 1978, at the age of 54. 

Jon Trimmer Ballet Trophy

Grand Master of the New Zealand ballet Jon Trimmer has featured numerous times on The Beret Project, but this post is actually not about him, but about my daughter Marshida, who won the 'Jon Trimmer Ballet Trophy' this year.

Not too keen a beret wearer herself, her father and Jon Trimmer make up for that!

What could I possibly say about this video?

Raul Seixas, con boina

Raul Santos Seixas (1945 – 1989) was a Brazilian rock composer, singer, songwriter and producer. He is sometimes called the "Father of Brazilian Rock" and "Maluco Beleza", the last one roughly translated as "Crazy Cool". 

His body of work consists of 21 albums released along his 26-year career. His musical style is mostly rock and ballad, although he wrote songs in many different styles, including variations of styles typical of his native Northeastern Brazil like Forró and Baião, and in fact often used more than one style in the same song, as in "Let Me Sing, Let Me Sing". His debut album, Raulzito e Os Panteras (1968), was produced when he was part of a band of the same name. 

However, he only gained prominence and critical audience with songs from the album Krig-Há, Bandolo! (1973), such as "Ouro de Tolo" ("Fool's Gold"), "Mosca na Sopa" ("Fly in the Soup"), and "Metamorfose Ambulante" ("Walking Metamorphosis"). Raul Seixas developed a unique musical style that emphasized the maverick and the mystic. His album Gita (1974), influenced by figures such as Aleister Crowley, expresses his views very directly.

Many songs in Gita were co-written with his frequent collaborator, then fellow mystic, and future worldwide bestselling author Paulo Coelho. Raul was interested in philosophy (especially metaphysics and ontology), psychology, history, literature and Latin. In October 2008, nineteen years after his death, Raul Seixas was placed in 19th position in a List of One Hundred Greatest Artists of Brazilian music sponsored by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone magazine, topping the likes of Milton Nascimento, Maria Bethania, Heitor Villa-Lobos and others, demonstrating the influence that Seixas' music continues to hold today.

Every year on Seixas' birthday, legions of fans, including hundreds of impersonators (many even changing their last name to Seixas as a sign of idolatry), throw a parade in his honor in downtown São Paulo.

Pamela Green with Beret

Pamela Green (1929 – 2010) was an English glamour model and actress, best known at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s. She modeled for Zoltán Glass, Horace Roye, Jean Straker, Joan Craven and John Everard.

Green started figure modelling to pay for her art school studies and moved on to photographic modelling because it paid more. 
In 1954 Pamela started to supply the bookshops and newsagents of London's Soho with her own postcard sets of glamour photographs, to supplement her work as a photographer's model. 

Her first film appearance was in 1960, when she starred in Michael Powell's psychological thriller Peeping Tom, which included her in a nude scene. In the scene, a model (Green) lays naked on a bed to be photographed. In one scene one of her breasts is exposed very briefly. The scene is regarded as the first female nude scene in a postwar English language mainstream feature film. The film was panned by the critics at the time and it destroyed Powell's career in the United Kingdom. In 1961, Green appeared in the nudist film Naked as Nature Intended, written and directed by Marks.