Vive le beret

Brigitte Bardot. Photo / AP

Sarkozy may have come under fire for his protectionist policies during the current financial gloom, but the citoyens are following his lead and storming French stores in search of everyone's favourite nationalistic headwear, the humble beret.

Sales figures have doubled, claim manufacturers in Orlon Sainte Marie, (the traditional beret-making region in the south-west of France), as yuppies, or bobos, as they're known over there, are becoming increasingly disillusioned with American and English influences, and seek to support the domestic economy by buying berets. Today's bobos, goes the theory, are getting back to their roots, looking nostalgically to the rural French idyll - although it remains to be seen whether they'll be accessorising their new headgear with a string of onions.

Originally worn by the guillotine thugs, the beret evolved from the French revolutionaries' red Phrygian caps, (worn by the sans-culottes as a mark of mutiny in the 18th century), and became the typical headgear of rural, and specifically male, agricultural workers in the south-west of the country. It was also the chosen hat of the French resistance movement, giving rise to a legend among the French that the side you slant your beret to is an indication of your political stance: if your beret leans to the right, so you do - and vice versa.

It wasn't until the 1920s that the beret became a unisex item, when it was adopted by singer Marlene Dietrich, the first woman to don the paysan garb, who scandalised society in doing so.

"I'm so taken with the image of Marlene in her Elsa Schiaparelli beret," says Stephen Jones, haute couture milliner and the subject of a major exhibition at London's V&A museum, Hats: An Anthology, "It just had to be in the exhibition. But when we tried to borrow one from the Berlin Film Museum, they had 84 for us to choose from. It was such a favourite style of hers."

As a part of French national dress, the item has all but disappeared from everyday life - some older men still wear them, reports one Parisian, but few young men do - and it has largely been adopted by women as a fashion statement. As well it might.

"Like all good hats, berets can accentuate the best features of a person to make them look more striking," says milliner Phillip Treacy, who says Greta Garbo is his favourite beret wearer.

In the mid-20th century the beret became a symbol of archetypal French glamour, associated with coffee-drinking philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre (known for wearing his apolitically straight), and Gauloises-smoking starlets like Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot.

The French uniform of matelot or Breton striped tops, teamed with cropped cigarette pants and ballet pumps may seem cliched, but it's as chic as it was when Jeanne Moreau first tripped across a bridge wearing just that in Truffaut's Jules et Jim.

As the mark of a rebel, the beret spans the gamut of 20th-century icons, from Saddam Hussein and Che Guevara to Monica Lewinsky, so there must be something sturdier than mere style behind its universal appeal. The fact that sales figures have risen may not be a nationalistic shift, but a further development of a trend in contemporary womenswear.

"It's the T-shirt of hats," says Jones. "Whether you're old, young, rich or poor, a beret suits everyone, and it's a very inexpensive way to transform your existing wardrobe. It's instant glamour, on the cheap."

But what of the French designers? Traditionally, they are keen to cash in on the rest of the world's Francophilia. Paris design houses Sonia Rykiel and Chanel regularly incorporate the beret in catwalk shows. But, while this season's autumn shows saw berets on the Milan catwalks (for the Italian labels Armani and Sportmax), the Paris designers seemed to leave them well alone. Not only that, but Paris-based John Galliano took inspiration from the only nation still spending money, the Russians, while Rykiel (in a shocking change of national allegiance) showed bowler hats, and at Chanel there were squashed pork-pie hats - which seemed more reminiscent of London bankers than left-bank bohemians.

"Girls in Paris do wear berets as an affirmation of their Frenchness," says Jonathan Wingfield, editor of French fashion magazine Numero, although he senses there is an equivocal attitude toward the garment.

"I wonder if some of this is about people 'shopping in their wardrobe', and wearing old accessories they used to wear when they were younger. To be honest, most of the young people that I see here in Paris are wearing British pork-pie hats, in the style of Agyness Deyn and Pete Doherty - that's what they think is really cool."

- INDEPENDENT