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The iconic beret is going nowhere fast
The quintessentially French beret is going the way of the small farm, but like everything in this proud nation, they're not giving in to the American baseball cap just yet.
With Gallouise locked firmly between tight lips a weathered face peers out from beneath a felt beret. Here in the foothills of the Pyrenees they say you can learn a lot about a man by the way he balances his beret. "Those with an eye for the girls pull it down to the side", relates a local enthusiast. But the young are not impressed by the body language of the beret. "Perhaps they're just not old enough to realise what the beret represents", despairs a father whose teenage son rejects the ancient headgear. There's now only two beret factories left in France. But country-folk are not yet despairing for another lost piece of rural France. "When you're young you follow fashion but in fifty years? Everybody will be wearing a beret."
Produced by ABC Australia
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