Dinosaurs

A beret for boineros in need of something different: the dinosaur beret (stegosaurus style). 

Some classic Jurassic wear found on American based website Apollobox.

Reflections on Berets & Pipes

Berets and Pipes have been a great combination in many ways. Just as common as seeing a boineroin European streets during the 1950s and 60s, it was to see a gentleman smoking a pipe. Then there is the added advantage of keeping your pipe semi-covered under a well sized beret, of course. 
   
The b/p combination was solidified in many beret labels, depicting a boinero smoking his pipe. Interestingly, the same happened the other way 'round: pipes depicting a boinero!
  
The trigger for these reflections comes from a large order this morning; a pipe smoking club who bought 30 of the new berets with the (pipe-smoking) Chirola label - practically my whole stock (and this at a time that a pipe-smoker is pretty much a social pariah)! 
 
Despite my instant love affair with these new-vintage berets, this morning I went back to my trusted Elósegui Clásica in chocolate-brown; the perfect beret on one of those fall/spring days in between numbing coldness and hot summer weather. 
  
The label in these (Spanish Civil War remakes) is the authentic "super exposicion", the predecessor of the present-day Super Lujo model. On an online auction last week, one of these labels sold for 25 euro (US$28.40), that's almost 2/3 of the new complete beret at South Pacific Berets!

El cateto de pedos

El cateto de pedos, freely translates into "the Farting Bumpkin".

Breaking wind is always good for a laugh...

Why does Jamie Hyneman wear a Beret?

Already 9 years since I posted on the Mythbusters and Jamee Hyneman; a great advocate for the beret in the US.
But, you may ask, why does he choose the beret as headgear of choice? Watch this short video:

Police Berets #3

Turkish Police

Gendarmerie Haute Montagne, France

Royal Marechaussee, Netherlands

Mossos d'Esquadra, Catalonia, Spain

Gendarmerie National, France

Police Berets #2

Ertzaintza, Basque Autonomous Police

Female Traffic Cops, Lebanon

Australian Military Police, accompanying the Duchess of Cornwall 

Somali Policeman

Policía de Carreteras a Policía Foral, Navare, Spain

Police Berets

Tribal Police Pakistan

Armenian police women

Egypt Tourist Police

Jammu and Kashmir police

Municipal Police of Bilbao, in 1934

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter (1923 –2013) was an American photographer and painter whose early work in the 1940s and 1950s was an important contribution to what came to be recognized as the New York school of photography.

Leiter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a well-known Talmud scholar and Saul studied to become a Rabbi. His mother gave him his first camera at age 12. At age 23, he left theology school and moved to New York City to become an artist.

In 1948, he started taking color photographs. He began associating with other contemporary photographers such as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus and helped form what Jane Livingston has termed the New York School of photographers during the 1940s and 1950s.

Leiter worked as a fashion photographer for the next 20 years and was published in Show, Elle, British Vogue, Queen, and Nova. In the late 1950s the art director Henry Wolf published Leiter’s color fashion work in Esquire and later in Harper’s Bazaar.

Edward Steichen included Leiter’s black and white photographs in the exhibition Always the Young Stranger at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953. In 2008, The Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris mounted Leiter’s first museum exhibition in Europe with an accompanying catalog.

Leiter is the subject of a 2012 feature-length documentary In No Great Hurry - 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter, directed and produced by Tomas Leach. Leiter is a featured subject, among others, in the documentary film Tracing Outlines (2015) by 2nd State Productions.

Hoodlums ॐ Berets

To my own astonishment, I discovered a long forgotten box full of brand new US made Hoodlum Om (ॐ) berets.

Om (ॐ) is part of the iconography found in ancient and medieval era manuscripts, temples, monasteries and spiritual retreats in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Om is one of the most important spiritual sounds. It refers to Atman (soul, self within) and Brahman (ultimate reality, entirety of the universe, truth, divine, supreme spirit, cosmic principles, knowledge). It is a sacred spiritual incantation made before and during the recitation of spiritual texts, during puja and private prayers, in ceremonies of rites of passages (sanskara) such as weddings, and sometimes during meditative and spiritual activities.

These Om berets consist of one base beret with a cut out second beret in a contrasting colour sewn on top - effectively two berets in one!

Since I had no idea of the existence of these berets, I'll happily listed them at the Clearance page with a 50% discount!

Filou

Filou is a rascal that you take lightly at your peril. Introduced in 2014, this young member of the Van Honsebrouck family packs a grown up punch. 

Filou will surprise you with its naughty character, but is calling it a rascal or a scamp a little disrespectful? In fact, the name is a nod and a wink to both the drinker and the beer: Filou goes down so easily that you’ll be asking for a refill before long. 

What about the drinker? Is he or she a rascal who can’t resist Filou’s temptations? Not many people will leave it at just the one glass, which poses the question: who is the biggest filou of the two? Filou is brewed with Belgian and Czech aromatic hops, pilsner malt and is refermented in the bottle. Another one for the road…?

Twists of Fate

A book I can't recommend highly enough, the graphic novel Twists of Fate by Paco Roca.

Apart from the beautiful art work and it being an extremely well researched and accurate story, it also gives the (more unusual) perspective of looking at WWII through the eyes of Spanish Loyalists - which is quite different from the typical US/European look on events (and outcomes!).

Miguel Ruiz is a Spanish veteran exiled in France who was a member of "La Nueve" ("The Nine"), a company of men that went straight from fighting for their homeland in the Spanish Civil War to battles spanning the globe in WWII. 

Their years-long trek across Europe and Africa was spurred on by their love for their country and their hatred for brutal dictatorships. 

Roca uses the composite character Ruiz's "memories" to tell a story that's an ode to a generation that bravely stood up to, and beat back, violent fascism.

The Art of Flying

When published in 2009, The Art of Flying was hailed as a landmark in the history of the graphic novel in Spain for its deeply touching synthesis of individual and collective memories. 

A deeply personal testament, Antonio Altarriba's account of what led his father to commit suicide at the age of ninety is a detective novel of sorts, one that traces his father's life from an impoverished childhood in Aragon, to service with Franco's army in the Civil war, escape to join the anarchist FAI, exile in France when the Republicans are defeated, to return to Spain in 1949 and the stultifying existence to which Republican sympathisers were consigned under Francoism. 

The Art of Flying is immensely moving and vivid, beautifully drawn by Kim. It was highly praised in Spain on first publication, where it was compared to Art Spiegelman's Maus. 

It went on to win six major prizes, including the 2010 National Comic Prize.