Kangol beret

How the British ended up adopting a French staple and exporting it to the world

- Delwyn Mallett

YOUNGER READERS (those susceptible to wearing their baseball caps back-to-front) will no doubt associate the name Kangol with the Hip-Hop crowd who also tend to wear their berets in an unconventional fore-and-aft disposition and are probably unaware that it was once a major British brand.

The beret started life centuries ago as an oversize floppy felted-wool pancake of a hat for shepherds in the Basque Country that straddles Spain and France. Industrialised production in the 19th Century saw it adopted en masse by working class men across much of France, to the extent that the beret (usually in conjunction with an 'Onion Johnny' striped Breton jumper) became an international cliché for a Frenchman.

Impoverished artists also took to the beret, including the far-from-poor Pablo Picasso, as well as Left Bank intellectuals hanging out in St Germain's cafés, and expat Americans such as macho war reporter and novelist Ernest Hemingway. Coco Chanel, well-known for borrowing male fashions, popularised the beret in the 1920s as a chic fashion item for adventurous women.