Peaked Cap: for people who don't dare to wear a beret
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Ché's Beret
Many, many people have asked me "what was the beret Ché Guevara wore?" and all I could do, was make a good guess. So yes, I was delighted when I found these two photographs by German photographer Thomas Hoepker of Arsenio Garcia Davila.
Davila was a combatant with Fidel Castro and survivor of the 1956 landing of the Granma in Cuba. He owns Ché Guevara's original beret and pipe. A model of the Granma (boat) sits on the table, in his house in Havana.
Now, what beret did Ché wear? It is definitely a French beret, with it's Bayadere lining and typical French heraldic label. Unfortunately, I can't enlarge the detail on the picture enough to tell, but I don't have the exact label in my collection. To me it seems to be either a Basque Authetique (by Laulhere) or a Fandango (made by Blancq-Olibet).
It is serendipitous that Che would end up wearing a beret. [He started out his Cuban journey wearing a visored patrol cap, that simply fell apart on him from use.] As his grandmother on his fathers side, family Lynch, was from Ireland but farther back still, he had traced his genealogy back to the Basque country! According to a conversation he had had with Jim Fitzpatrick in Ireland during a flight layover (bad weather), from the Soviet Union, he considered himself to be of Basque/Irish ancestry. Matthew
Daan Kolthoff is a writer, living between the hills of Wellington, New Zealand and, when not writing, meditating or walking the hills, he is usually researching, reading about or ordering berets from around the world.
It is serendipitous that Che would end up wearing a beret. [He started out his Cuban journey wearing a visored patrol cap, that simply fell apart on him from use.] As his grandmother on his fathers side, family Lynch, was from Ireland but farther back still, he had traced his genealogy back to the Basque country! According to a conversation he had had with Jim Fitzpatrick in Ireland during a flight layover (bad weather), from the Soviet Union, he considered himself to be of Basque/Irish ancestry. Matthew
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