Kangol Monty

Finally available through South Pacific Berets: the Kangol Monty Berets!

A range of sizes, a range of colours.

A true classic in berets - wear a piece of history!

In BLACK, STORM or RED @ $39.50. Order here!

The German series #20 - Bildhauers (Sculptors)

As seen many times before on The Beret Project, the beret is the hat of choice of many sculptors and especially so for German sculptors! 

Pictured below some random pictures of German sculptors:

Reinhold Schröder

 Roger Delleré from Bitburg

Heinrich Thein

Wilhelm Hable

Estepan Urkiaga Basaraz

Estepan Urkiaga Basaraz aka Estepan Urkiaga Basaraz, but better known by his pseudonym Lauaxeta (1905 - 1937) was a Spanish Basque poet and journalist. He participated in the founding of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language . During the Civil War he was part of the Basque administration but was captured and executed by Franco's troops.

His early religious vocation led him to become a novitiate, but he left the church to devote himself to journalism and literature . He joined the Basque Nationalist Party , where he took charge of several publications in Euskera.

At the outbreak of the Civil War and the adoption of the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, he worked with the Basque Government, dealing with propaganda and as Corps Commander, serving in Bilbao, where he helped hiding some priests fleeing the Republican territory. He was captured by Franco's troops, court-martialed and sentenced to death; shot in the cemetery of Santa Isabel de Vitoria two later, despite the efforts of the Basque Government to exchange him for a Nationalist prisoner.

1967

Collection of Vintage Basque Posters

Jack London

Seaman J.L. with home-made beret

John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, 1876 – 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf.
London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics such as his dystopian novel, The Iron Heel and his non-fiction exposé, The People of the Abyss.

The India Series #8 - 63 Years of Independence

Today, 63 years ago, India became independent from Great Britain and preparations for the "Day of the Republic" are in full swing. Good for some interesting beret-pictures:

Eiffel Tower and Berets

The béret, baguette, a bottle of red wine, cigarette hanging from the lips... No shortage of cliches for Frenchmen, or anything French.

The Eiffel Tower is another good one, best in combination with a beret, of course.

I have to admit feeling very uncomfortable wearing my beret while in Paris last year, with the only other berets hanging from souvenir stalls and worn by American and Asian tourists. 

It's all a matter of ego, I know... 

But from the 1000's of pictures available, I like the tower/beret picture below best.

The Dutch Series #9 - Cees Kortlang

Cees Kortlang (1926 - 2008) was a Dutch painter and graphic artist.

After secondary school (HBS), he went to the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague from 1946-1952, where he majored in drawing. He took his exams but failed them. After his period in The Hague, Theo Swagemakers helped Cees Kortlang and his then wife move into a studio on Zomerdijkstraat in the Rivierenbuurt area of Amsterdam. Other residents on Zomerdijkstraat included writers and artists Jan Wolkers, Piet Esser, Jaap Hillenius, Mies Hillenius, Theo Swagemakers and Jaap Wagemaker.

But he also spent a lot of time abroad. From the middle of the 1960s, he spent several weeks a year in the Graphic studio Druckwerkstatt in Wolfsburg Castle in Germany, founded by Gustav Kurt Beck in 1962. He also received funding from the French government to work for a while in Stanley William Hayter’s ‘Atelier 17’ in Paris in 1965. In the summers of 1976 and 1977, he worked in the Printshop in St. Michaels, Newfoundland. He also travelled to Prague, Iceland, Greenland and Ireland. He was inspired by the scenery he encountered in these countries, which is reflected in his work.

In 1992, after the death of his mother and his divorce from his wife, Kortlang returned to live in his parental home in Ermelo. By this time, his daughter had grown up. During a holiday in Venezuela in May 1997, Karin Kortlang and her boyfriend went missing. 

This event marked an all-time low in the life of Cees Kortlang. In 1997 he created various etches which he dedicated to Karin and through which he tried to achieve closure on the event. He later wrote about his daughter in the book Balans (“Balance”), an autobiographical story about his life. 

The Karin Kortlang Foundation is named after his daughter. On 5 April 2008, Cees Kortlang died in Harderwijk following a stroke.

The Dreamers, by Bernardo Bertolucci

The Dreamers is a 2003 French/British/Italian drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The screenplay is by Gilbert Adair, based on his own novel The Holy Innocents.

The Dreamers tells the story of an American university student in Paris who, after meeting a peculiar brother and sister who are fellow film enthusiasts, becomes entangled in an erotic conflict. It is set against the backdrop of the 1968 Paris student riots. The film makes several references to various movies of classical and New Wave cinema, incorporating clips from films that are often imitated by the actors in particular scenes.

The Dreamers was controversial in the United States for its depiction of nudity and sexual content, which attracted an NC-17 rating.

Where are the Tolosa Tupidas?

I have had a few questions from readers about the boinas Tolosa Tupida with headband, as announced on the blog earlier this week. "Where are they? What do they cost?" and "How can I order one?"

My apologies, I thought I had all the new stock from Argentina listed on the web site, but indeed, a few models were missing. Please have a look here (and here for the cotton models) and if any questions: please ask - always happy to help!

Red Beret by Rob van Hooff

Italian Lumberjack by Tiziano Zenzolo

I found this photograph while searching for Italian beret pictures. It's title is; The Basque Lumberjack, by Tiziano Zenzolo. Unfortunately, I could not find any further information or contact details to ask for permission posting this picture here (Tiziano, please drop me a line if you ever read this!), but couldn't resist.
What a great photograph!

More News from South Pacific Berets!

The South Pacific Berets site is all updated now!

The newly added Espinosas Silver Label in 24cm diameter (black and red) have been added and more colours in the 26 and 28cm range.

The Boina Super Espinosa is the flagship in this range, with lining and headband.

Then there is a much larger choice in the Tolosa Tupida's in wool; colour wise and with/without headband. 

More TT's in cotton, both in the 31cm range and as Plato Grandes. 

Pietro Nenni

Pietro Sandro Nenni (1891 – 1980) was an Italian socialist politician, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and lifetime Senator since 1970. He was a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951. He was a central figure of the Italian left from the 1920s to the 1960s.
After his peasant parents died, he was placed in an orphanage by an aristocratic family. Every Sunday Nenni recited his catechism before the countess and if he did well received a silver coin. "Generous but humiliating", he recalled.


While the socialist Mussolini became a fascist, the republican Nenni joined the Socialist Party in 1921, at the moment of its split with the wing that would form the Communist Party (PCI).  In 1925 he was arrested for publishing a booklet on the Fascists' murder of Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti.

Pietro Nenni and Randolfo Pacciardi in Madrid in September 1936

Nenni went on to fight with the International Brigades in Spain. He was the cofounder and political commissar of the Garibaldi Brigade. After the defeat of the Spanish Republic and the victory of Franco he returned to France. In 1943 he was arrested by the Germans and then imprisoned in Italy on the island of Ponza.

After being liberated in August 1943, he returned to Rome to lead the Italian Socialist Party which had been reunified as the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity. After the surrender of Italy with the Allied armed forces on September 8, 1943, he was one of the political officials of the National Liberation Committee - the underground political entity of Italian Partisans during the German occupation.

In 1956 Nenni broke with the PCI after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. He returned the Stalin Prize money ($25,000). Subsequently, he slowly led his party into supporting membership of the NATO and closer European integration, and sought cooperation with the leading party, the Christian Democrats.

He died in Rome on January 1, 1980. A daughter, Vittoria "Viva" Daubeuf, died in Auschwitz. She is memorialized in the writings of Charlotte Delbo.

Rodin's Beret by Erik Dietman

An interesting view on the beret:

Erik Dietman was born in Jönköping, Sweden, in 1937. He studied at the academy of fine arts in Malmö but lived in France for most of his life; he died in Paris in 2002.

He was a member of the Fluxus movement, that asserted the intrinsic artistic quality of even the most common gesture, and claimed artistic creation should not be confined to the field of aesthetics, but be part of the flow of daily life, on behalf of an absolute conception of art.

Milice Française

Despite the well molded self image of the French during WWII, the truth, to a certain extend, is pretty ugly.

The beret may have been a symbol for La Résistance française,  it was also part of the uniform of the Milice française, the collaborators with Nazi Germany under the Vichy Government. 

Milice troops, known as miliciens, wore a blue uniform coat, a brown shirt and a wide blue beret. (During active paramilitary-style operations, a pre-war French Army helmet was used.) Its newspaper was Combats. (Not to be confused with the underground Resistance newspaper, Combat.) It employed both full-timers and part-timers, as well as a youth wing. The Milice's armed forces were officially known as the Franc-Gardes.

Confined initially to the former zone libre of France under the control of the Vichy regime (which moderated its actions and forbade some of its more radical aspirations), the radicalized Milice in January 1944 moved into what had been the zone occupée of France, including Paris.

Since the Second World War, the term milice has acquired a derogatory meaning in French.