More Super Lujo's!

By popular demand: Boinas Elósegui's top model is now available in the most popular diameter  29cm/11.5" with headband in sizes 57-61.

This Exposición Super Lujo comes with azul satin lining, a black leather headband and carries the embroidered Euskalherria label. 

This is South Pacific's most expensive beret at $62.50, but with the low p&h cost, I believe you won't find a better price anywhere else. 

Unfortunately, due to high duties and import costs, prices will rise further still.

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark "swollen cheeks", Gillespie admitted to copying the style of trumpeter Roy Eldridge early in his career. 

He replaced Eldridge in the 'Teddy Hill' Band after Eldridge's departure. He eventually began experimenting and creating his own style which would eventually come to the attention of Mario Bauza, the Godfather of Afro-Cuban jazz who was then a member of the Cap Calloway Orchestra, joining Calloway in 1939, Gillespie was fired after two years when he cut a portion of the Calloway's buttocks with a knife after Calloway accused him of throwing spitballs (the two men later became lifelong friends and often retold this story with great relish until both of their deaths).

Although noted for his on and off-stage clowning, Gillespie endured as one of the founding fathers of the Afro-Cuban &/or Latin Hazz tradition. Influenced by Bauza, he was able to fuse Afro-American jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms to form a burgeoning CuBop sound. He toured Africa, the Middle East and Latin America under the sponsorship of the US State Department. Quite often he returned, not only with fresh musical ideas, but with musicians who would eventually go on the achieve world renown. 

With a strong sense of pride in his Afro-American heritage, he left a legacy of musical excellence that embraced and fused all musical forms, but particularly those forms with roots deep in Africa such as the music of Cuba, other Latin American countries and the Caribbean.

Dizzy's trade markberet and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.

Cheaters

The above pictured beret is made by Hills Hats, New Zealand. A nice beret (apart from an awful label associating the beret with bull fighting). The sewn-in label tells you it is made by "Hills hats Limited in New Zealand". The attached little brochure tells you it is "Hand Crafted in New Zealand".

Two weeks ago, when meeting with the director of Hills Hats (I was interested in adding Hills Berets to the South Pacific stock...), I learned that NZ made berets are actually made in Pakistan! The plain berets are shipped to NZ where Hills sew in the lining, add a label and a headband and, since this labour consists of 50% of the total labour performed to manufacture the beret, it is perfectly legal to say the end product is "Made in NZ"... Call me naive, but I was shocked!

Checking with a French beret manufacturer, I learned that this indeed is common practice (for some beret manufacturers). Most 'souvenir of Paris-berets' for example,  are Chinese made, but lined and embroidered in France and therefore "made" in France.

Looking further into the issue, the only thing that becomes clear is that "Country of Origin labeling" is very unclear! It differs from country to country and often creative language is used to mislead the customer. This article in Wikipedia is a good start for learning more. 

Some transparency for your piece of mind: the berets I sell through South Pacific Berets from Boinas Elosegui, Bonigor, the Fabrica Nacional de Sombreros, A. de Setti and TONAK come from where it says they come from (resp. Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Italy and the Czech Republic) - no doubt about it! The berets I sell under the South Pacific Berets label are made by one of the oldest beret manufacturers in India and one of the large suppliers worldwide of military berets.
The few Hills berets I do sell are from NZ, 100%. They were made in the 1970's in Porirua on NZ's North Island.

The Rádiovka's are Back!

There was a time, not so long ago, that I cheekily proclaimed that Size Does Matter, in principal not wearing anything less than 30cm in diameter.

Then I found the Czech made Rádiovka, one of the most traditional (as in un-changed) berets still in production with a diameter of only 23cm.
For me a revelation that something that small can be soooo comfortable! And since then, I have worn it constantly, inside and out, any time when it's not pouring down with rain or when needing serious protection from the sun. 

To be honest, it took a while before I tried one myself ("the size does matter"adagium, remember), but the light soon shined on me.

Interestingly, for a while it was one of my best selling berets, but with a bankrupt supplier in the Czech Republic I was unable to restock. Well, that problem is solved now and the Rádiovka's are back at South Pacific Berets!

Enjoy an original treat!

John Lennon (3)

John Lennon has featured a few times on The Beret Project (here, here and here, for example). And for good reason; Lennon actively supported so many ethical and political stands that, I at least, associate with what I would call the "the traditional beret wearer".
Yes, big words, I know - but not too big too be said.

Anyway, all this just to share this great picture of JL and YO I just stumbled upon. 

Jack Nicholson and Friends

Ah, Jack Nicholson. No need to introduce this (infrequent) beret wearer.

J.N. next to Alex Ben Block (white beret)

Abandoned by his father in his childhood, he was raised believing his grandmother was his mother and his mother was his older sister. The truth was revealed to him years later when a Time magazine journalist uncovered the truth while preparing a story on the star. Jack had an on-and-off relationship with actress Anjelica Huston, which spanned 16 years before they split in 1989, after Rebecca Broussard was carrying his child.

JN with Anjelica Huston at the 1976 Oscars

Nicholson may be best known for his acting, but of course he is also a film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark-themed portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for Academy Awards 12 times (he won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets). He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. 

Groucho Marx chatting with Jack Nicholson at a party for George McGovern circa 1972

Other notable films in which he has starred include, in chronological order, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, The Shining, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Reds, Batman, A Few Good Men, Hoffa, Wolf, As Good as It Gets, About Schmidt, Something's Gotta Give and The Departed.

JN plays a counselor and Adam Sandler a man ordered to undergo therapy in 'Anger Management'

Finally: French Berets!

It has taken me well over two years, but it is well worth the wait! At the very moment of writing this, boxes of berets are being filled for South Pacific Berets by the oldest beret manufacturer in the world: Blancq-Olibet. 

Located in Nay, one of the French beret capitals, the Blancq-Olibet plants were established in 1819 and have been making berets for six generations. These are marketed under the names Bakarra and Pébéo.

The company also supplies the French army and a number of couture houses such as Agnès B and Lacoste.

I have ordered a variety of 'Luxe' and 'Excellence' berets under the labels pictured above and below; beautiful berets in 256, 279, 291 and 302mm diameter. 
And last, often asked for: the original Alpine beret of the Chasseurs Alpins under the Bakarra label!

Hopefully available before the end of this month!

Dr. Hermann Detering

Dr. Hermann Detering of Berlin, Germany, is the creator of RadikalKritik , a web journal devoted to critiquing the New Testament and investigating various scholarly proposals for the origins and dating of the texts.

Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson

Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM (1894 – 1982) was an English abstract painter. 

Born in 1894 in Denham, Buckinghamshire, Nicholson was the son of the painters Sir William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde, and the brother of artist Nancy Nicholson, architect Christopher Nicholson and Anthony Nicholson. 

Nicholson was exempted from World War I military service due to asthma. He travelled to New York in 1917 for an operation on his tonsils, then visited other American cities, returning to England in 1918. Before he returns, Nicholson's mother dies in July of influenza and his brother Anthony Nicholson is killed in action.
From 1920 to 1933 he was married to the painter Winifred Nicholson and lived in London. After his first exhibition of figurative works in London in 1922, his work began to be influenced by Synthetic Cubism, and later by the primitive style of Rousseau. In 1926, he became chair of the Seven and Five Society.

In London, Nicholson met the sculptors Barbara Hepworth (to whom he was married from 1938 to 1951) and Henry Moore. On visits to Paris he met Mondrian, whose work in the neoplastic style was to influence him in an abstract direction, and Picasso, whose cubism would also find its way into his work. His gift, however, was the ability to incorporate these European trends into a new style that was recognizably his own.

Foxy and Frankie, 1933

Nicholson married the photographer Felicitas Vogler in 1957 and moved to Castagnola, Switzerland, in 1958. In 1968 he received the British Order of Merit (OM). In 1971 he separated from Vogler and moved to Cambridge.
Nicholson died in London on 6 February 1982.

Ben Nicholson meeting the self-taught Cornish artist Alfred Wallis

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was an American painter, active mainly in New York. Hopper trained under Robert Henri, 1900-06, and between 1906 and 1910 made three trips to Europe, though these had little influence on his style. 

Hopper exhibited at the Armoury Show in 1913, but from then until 1923 he abandoned painting, earning his living by commercial illustration. Thereafter, however, he gained widespread recognition as a central exponent of American Scene painting, expressing the loneliness, vacuity, and stagnation of town life. Yet Hopper remained always an individualist: `I don't think I ever tried to paint the American scene; I'm trying to paint myself.'

Edward Hopper painted American landscapes and cityscapes with a disturbing truth, expressing the world around him as a chilling, alienating, and often vacuous place. Everybody in a Hopper picture appears terribly alone. Hopper soon gained a widespread reputation as the artist who gave visual form to the loneliness and boredom of life in the big city. This was something new in art, perhaps an expression of the sense of human hopelessness that characterized the Great Depression of the 1930s.

'Soir Bleu', oil on canvas, 1914

Not known for wearing a beret himself, Hopper did feature a few berets in his paintings.

SWAGS Servicemen's Wives And Girlfriends with Beret

A group of military wives and girlfriends have become 'calendar girls' to raise money for injured servicemen and women.

The SWAGs (Service Wives And Girlfriends) posed naked with guns, planes and tanks for the 2010 charity calendar.

A total of 50 volunteers, all wives and girlfriends of men from the three Armed services, were photographed at bases and training centres in Hampshire.

The calendar has already raised £26,000 (Rs 18 lakh), which will go to help servicemen who have been wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kelly Monk (20), whose boyfriend Andrew Mason (21), serves in the Princess of Wales' Second Battalion, came up with the idea for the calendar. Kelly said, "I got together with Andrew's sister Sam to do the shoot and it just snowballed from there. We were nervous at first but then we really started enjoying it and everyone had a laugh. My boyfriend is fine with it. He knows that it's for a good cause." 

Kelly Monk and her fiance Pte Andrew ‘Bug’ Mason.

Svanetian Mountain Hats

11 August I posted on Svanetian felt hats and the New York made 6 Panel Felt Caps. From today, I can finally offer the real thing as well! 

And frankly, I am quite proud of this feat - it has taken me more than a decade to find a supplier of these hats! I got my first one from a Georgian friend, while working in Azerbaijan in 1996. Moth eaten and over worn, I managed to find a replacement while working on the other side of the High Caucasus in Chechnya, in in 1997, but not having been back to the Caucasus since, that was it...

Village Elders in Svanetia, 1890

Despite internet and an enormous growth in "openness" over the last decade in the Republic of Georgia, it still proves pretty much impossible to order felt hats, handmade by artisan hat makers in an almost inaccessible area of the highest mountains in Europe, from the other side of the world. 

But here they are, beautiful hats in grey and white, 100% felted wool, 100% hand made according to age old tradition. Due to incredible shipping and Customs costs, it's a one-off order so be quick if you are interested!