asman

الخميس، 1 مارس 2018

Stage is set for an incredible week in the life of Adel Karam

Author:

William Mullally

Thu, 2018-03-01 17:27

ID:

1519903801124352200

DUBAI: Adel Karam has been a fixture on the Lebanese comedy scene since the 1990s. Now he is breaking new ground for Middle Eastern performers with his latest television stand-up special, Live from Beirut, the first Arabic-language comedy special produced by Netflix.
“It gave me a lot of pride that Netflix actually chose me as their step into Arabic content and Arabic comedy,” he said. “It’s a big step for me to be the first one. To be the leader in Netflix’s Arabic content is a big source of pride.”
Yet Karam never intended to become a stand up comedian He first gained fame in 1993 when he was cast on SL Chi, a popular Lebanese sketch-comedy TV show. Since then, he has become a prominent figure in Lebanese film and television. His credits include the comedy show Mafe Metlo, his talk show Hayda Haki, and acclaimed films such as 2007’s Caramel and The Insult, which is nominated for the Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards.
His stand-up career began in 2005. He is still not sure how or why it happened.
“I’ve been in the comedy business for 25 years but it wasn’t my intention to do stand-up comedy. It was a coincidence,” Karam said.
Nevertheless, he is proud of what he has accomplished in the medium, even claiming credit for introducing stand-up to the Middle East with his first big show, in Beirut in 2005.
“Stand-up comedy wasn’t present in the Middle East. I was the first one,” he said.
The claim is not without some merit. While Nemr Abou Nassar started the bilingual stand-up comedy scene in Beirut in 2000, and Fadi Reaidy was performing Arabic-language stand-up before 2005, Karam’s huge reach as an established television star brought stand-up to much wider audiences in the region.
That is not to say the transition to stand-up was easy for him. The most difficult thing, he explained, was the need to be vulnerable on stage and reveal more of himself to the audience than he ever had before.
“I started doing comedy about myself and my own personal experiences,”he said. “I started noticing that what makes me laugh at myself can make other people laugh, as well. Nonetheless, it’s very difficult for me to be vulnerable. Even now. It’s a big challenge for me every single time I do stand-up.”
For his Netflix special, Karam decided that his routine would be unrehearsed and true to his experiences, down to the most uncomfortable details.
“I just write and I go with it,” he said. “I live the story again on stage. Almost all of it is true. Every joke is based on an almost 100-percent-true story.”
The segment he was most nervous about is also the longest part of the show: the story of a real-life trip to the hospital for a colonoscopy, and the fellow patient he befriended.
“It was a little tricky for me,” said Karam. “I didn’t know if the audience will love this. It was very detailed: how they act in the hospital, the differences between ‘first-class’ health insurance and ‘second-class’, and how they treat the patients differently. I’m a good actor, so I have to embody the scene.”
Whether or not he might have over-shared his personal experiences does not concern Karam at all.
“My only concern is to make them laugh, that's it,” he said. “To laugh about the subject, to laugh about me, to laugh at the situation—I just want them to laugh.”
While he has grown more comfortable about opening up to the audience on stage, that is not the case in real life. Even now, having become a household name in Lebanon, he remains skeptical of his own fame and why people are so interested in him.
“I’m a shy person. I’m a very shy person,” he said. “I still don’t understand why, when people approach me, I still feel shy. Sometimes I forget myself – I forget that I’m famous. I ask my brother, ‘What’s going on?’ He tells me, ‘You’re freaking famous.’ I say, ‘Oh OK sorry.’”
Next up for Karam is the Academy Awards on March 4, when he will find out whether The Insult wins the Oscar. While his stand-up comedy is never meant to push the audience too far out of its comfort zone, the film, which depicts the extreme cultural tensions in present-day Lebanon, does just that.
“I don’t try to make them uncomfortable,” he said of his stand-up fans. “The Insult is a different story.”
Karam is proud that the film is representing Lebanon at the Oscars and views it as a major development in his career.
“It’s a big step, a giant step, to do such a thing, and to be involved in the Oscars,” he said.
What future challenge it might be a step is towards, he is less sure of.
“I don’t know – going to the moon, maybe?”
* Adel Karam: Live from Beirut will be available on Netflix from March 1, 2018.

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http://ift.tt/2F5GFqo March 01, 2018 at 12:40PM

When photos became art: London show honors Victorian pioneers

7:40 ص Lifestyle No comments

Author:

AFP

Thu, 2018-03-01 11:57

ID:

1519896125853723900

LONDON: From Alice teetering on the edge of Wonderland to Charles Darwin mumbling into his beard, London’s National Portrait Gallery is exhibiting a rare selection of works by four pioneering Victorian photographers.
Lewis Carroll was not only a mathematician and children’s author but also a ground-breaking photographer.
The “Victorian Giants” show displays some of the photographs he took of young Alice Liddell, the muse behind his fantastical novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” along with her brothers and sister.
Carroll was friends with three other Victorian “giants,” who inspired each other to push the boundaries of the latest art form to produce sublime portraits.
Mysterious Swede Oscar Rejlander acted as mentor to the group, which also included high-society ladies Julia Cameron and Clementina Hawarden.
The exhibition brings together the four artists for the first time, with some photographs never seen before by the public.
Curator Phillip Prodger said the photographs’ distinctive style represented “the birth of the art of photography.”
The photographs explore a broad range of subjects.
Children — symbols of purity and innocence at the time — and celebrated beauties such as Julia Jackson, mother of writer Virginia Woolf, mingle with noted men of the age, including father of evolution Charles Darwin.
Darwin even brought the developing art to bear on science, commissioning Rejlander to produce a series of self-portraits for a book he was preparing on the emotions of humans and animals.
“When people think of Victorian photography, they sometimes think of stiff, fusty portraits of women in crinoline dresses, and men in bowler hats,” said Prodger, head of the museum’s photography department.
“But ‘Victorian Giants’ is anything but.”
The quartet “forever changed thinking about photography and its expressive power,” he added.
The great photographers of the Victorian era were the first to explore the psychological depth of their subjects, Prodger explained.
“Here visitors can see the birth of psychological expressiveness.”
Photography was an art-form highly prized by Queen Victoria and her husband Albert.
The royal tradition continues, with Prince William’s wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, selecting and commenting on some photos in the new exhibition.
She visited the exhibition on Wednesday, the day before it opened to the public. It will run until May 20.

Prince William’s wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, selected and commented on some photos in the new exhibition following royal tradition. (AFP)

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http://ift.tt/2FF5tXn March 01, 2018 at 10:43AM

‘Hey Yeong-mi’: South Korean businesses join curling craze

1:40 ص Lifestyle No comments

Author:

Thu, 2018-03-01 03:00

ID:

1519891111643542300

SEOUL, South Korea: In South Korea’s sudden craze for curling, it really is all in a name.
Free flights and baseball tickets are just some of the freebies South Korean companies are offering to anyone named Yeong-mi (yuhng-MEE), the first name of the lead sweeper for the women’s curling team that won an unexpected silver medal at the recently completed Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The five-member team, from a remote province famous for its garlic, captured hearts in a country that hardly knew curling before. Dubbed the Garlic Girls, they have become sought-after models for commercials and inspired countless online memes and catch-phrases.
Among them is “Yeong-mi ya,” or “Hey Yeong-mi,” which the team’s skip, or captain, repeatedly called out to give guidance to lead sweeper Kim Yeong-mi. Commentators dissected the skip’s intentions based on how she called Kim’s name or how many times she said “Yeong-mi,” a common first name.
And so a marketing campaign was born.
Budget carrier Tway Air is giving away 200 roundtrip tickets to Nagoya, Japan, to people named Yeong-mi. Hundreds have left a comment on the airline’s website identifying themselves as Oh Yeong-mi, Cho Yeong-mi, Lee Yeong-mi, etc.
The Samsung Blue Wings baseball team is inviting anyone with the name to its opening day K-League game. The Lotte World amusement park is offering discounts through mid-March to people who have either “Yeong” or “Mi” in their names.
In the team’s home province of North Gyeongsang, the BlueOne Water Park is being even more generous: It is giving free entrance to those sharing the first name of any of the five team members.
Curling is relatively new to South Korea. The first curling center opened in 2006 in Uiseong, where four of the five Garlic Girls attended the same high school. The team, which came into the Olympics ranked eighth in the world, crushed heavyweights Canada and Sweden before beating Japan 8-7 in the semifinals. It fell to Sweden, 8-3, in the finals. By then, the team members, with their success and quirky nicknames for their favorite breakfast foods, had become a sensation.

Kim Yeong-mi, lead sweeper of South Korea’s curling team, watches during the women’s curling final in the Gangneung Curling Center at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Gangneung, which they won an unexpected silver medal. (AP)

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http://ift.tt/2t9hgLg March 01, 2018 at 09:16AM

Book Review: A history of West Africa’s golden empires

1:40 ص Lifestyle No comments

Author:

LISA KAAKI

Thu, 2018-03-01 13:37

ID:

1519889880723492400

Two-thirds of the world’s gold once came from West Africa. But who really knew this? West Africa’s history has been largely overlooked and undervalued. It’s about ancient empires, fabulous natural resources and the trans-Saharan trade routes which were among the most lucrative in the world.
“African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa” sheds new light on the golden empires that controlled the West African interior and an astonishing patchwork of people who wrote their story against considerable odds. Drawing on a rich variety of sources including Arabic manuscripts and oral histories as well as recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context. This ground-breaking history reveals not only the wealth of these golden empires but also the important role of Islam.
Islam’s expansion, combined with the growth of commercial ties, triggered a series of unique political experiments which gave rise to empires in which the question of slavery was a major preoccupation. This encouraged a deep and original reflection resulting in the birth of new ideas and concepts long before the seeds of colonialism and the slave trade were sown.
This book invites us into West Africa’s multifaceted past at a time when the continent was both powerful and free from the scourge of slavery and the grip of imperialism. The author deplores the West’s collective silence on early and medieval Africa and the blatant lack of research despite considerable developments in the region, especially in the field of archaeology.
The discovery of hundreds of urban sites with an adjacent production of various local crafts gives the region a rightful place among world civilizations such as the Tang dynasties in China, the Vedic period in India and the Mayan civilization.
The Empire of Ghana was the first state established in West Africa in AD300 and when it reached its heyday during the 8th century, it covered much of present-day Mali and parts of eastern Senegal. Ghana was extremely wealthy and powerful, although it was the smallest of the so-called golden empires including Mali and Songhai.
Al Bakri, an Andalusian Berber historian and the greatest geographer in the Muslim West, is a major source of information thanks to his “Book of Highways and of Kingdoms,” written in 1068. It is based on literature and reports of merchants and travelers and gives crucial information on the Ghana Empire.
Al Bakri notices that “only the king and his heir apparent may wear sown clothes, other people wear robes of cotton, silk or brocade, according to their means.” The king sat in a domed pavilion in royal sessions and flanked on his right stood “the sons of the king of his country wearing splendid garments and their hair plaited with gold.” To approach the king, the people would fall on their knees and sprinkle dust on their heads, for this is their way of greeting him, “while the Muslims only clapped their hands.”
Traders introduced Islam to Ghana from the northern part of the country but it could not save the empire, which was eventually incorporated in the Empire of Mali.
Mali is probably the most legendary of West African empires. Founded in the middle of the 13th century by Sundiata Keita, leader of the Malinke people, it reached its apogee in the 14th century. Its gold mines aroused the interest of the European powers.
King Kankan Musa, grandnephew of Sundiata Keita, became one of the most extraordinary of all African kings. He ascended the throne at the age of 23 and reigned for 25 years. He is mostly remembered from the historical accounts related to his Hajj, which he performed at the age of 35 in 1324.
Ibn Kathir wrote in his book “The Beginning and the End of History” that Musa was accompanied by 20,000 people when he arrived in Cairo en route to the Pilgrimage. Other sources give different numbers, but these discrepancies can easily be explained by the fact that when Musa arrived in Egypt, he had fewer people around him than when he started.
Al-Umari, a source mentioned by Gomez, estimates that the King “left his country with 100 loads of gold,” which is equivalent to 16,000 kilograms or 16 tons. “They had so much gold with them that the rate of gold fell by two dirhams in each mithqal,” Ibn Kathir wrote humorously.
Musa’s display of wealth during his visit to Cairo impressed the Egyptians, who treated him like a powerful leader. His pilgrimage also encouraged the establishment of commercial ties between Mali and Egypt that would last for centuries. But, most of all, it would create “an indelible impression of Mali as the quintessential land of gold,” says Gomez.
Malians ruled at a time when the European powers were traveling across the oceans to discover new lands and expand their rule, but they turned away from the sea and chose the Sahara. Both the Mughal and Mongol empires showed that a naval force is not necessary if its lack of one is compensated by an exceptionally powerful and professional army. “Mali lacked this level of military proficiency; it was not spatially positioned to benefit from the generative effects of the Silk and Spice Routes, nor did it have access to such wide-ranging expertise,” writes Gomez.
As one of the greatest, if not the greatest, West African empire, imperial Mali ruled over Mali, Niger, Senegal and Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Chad. But its inability to extend its rule beyond its eastern and western provinces would eventually encourage breakaway states, threaten the unity of the empire and eventually lead to its dissolution.
When Mali began to disintegrate, the Songhai took control of Gao and, under the rule of Sonni Ali, the Songhai Empire even surpassed the Malian empire in area, wealth and power. This empire also distinguished itself with the creation of a professional army and a civil service, and Muslim scholars, judges and doctors were supported financially. By the mid-15th century, the Empire of Songhai reached its apogee and 50 years later, the city of Timbuktu became an important commercial center and a great seat of learning with the Sankore University housing 25,000 scholars.
Unlike the Malian Empire, where everything was controlled by the Mande, the Songhai Empire developed into an ethnically heterogeneous society in which loyalty to the state transcended allegiance to one’s clan.
The Songhai remained connected to the world via a sea of sand, the Sahara Desert. Never expecting an army to cross the desert, the Songhai were surprised by a daring attack from their unsuspected Berber neighbor. The decisive battle of Tondibi in 1591 put an end to the Songhai supremacy. Their empire soon splintered into many small kingdoms. In the mid-15th century, the arrival of the Portuguese along the Gulf of Guinea signaled the end of the golden empires in West Africa and the advent of a new period of confrontation and submission to Europe.

“African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa” sheds new light on the golden empires that controlled the West African interior.

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http://ift.tt/2FIrV28 March 01, 2018 at 08:40AM

DiCaprio and Pitt team up for new Quentin Tarantino movie

1:40 ص Lifestyle No comments

Author:

REUTERS

Thu, 2018-03-01 04:51

ID:

1519880755113234400

LOS ANGELES: Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt — two of Hollywood’s biggest stars — are teaming up for Quentin Tarantino’s next project, a movie set in the 1969 Hollywood hippy era around the Charles Manson murders.
Movie studio Sony Pictures said on Wednesday that the film was called “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and will feature DiCaprio as the former star of a Western TV series, and Pitt as his longtime stunt double.
It’s the first time the two actors have starred in a feature film together.
“Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick (DiCaprio) has a very famous next-door neighbor ... Sharon Tate,” Sony Pictures said in a statement.
Tate, the pregnant actress wife of director Roman Polanski, was murdered in 1969 by followers of Manson, one of America’s most notorious criminals. Manson died in November 2017 at the age of 83 while serving a life sentence.
The movie is to be released on August 9, 2019, exactly 50 years after Tate and four friends were stabbed or shot dead.
Tarantino said he had been working on the script for five years and had lived in the Los Angeles area for most of his life, “including in 1969, when I was seven years old.”
“I’m very excited to tell this story of an LA and a Hollywood that don’t exist anymore. And I couldn’t be happier about the dynamic teaming of DiCaprio and Pitt,” he said in a statement.
DiCaprio won an Oscar in 2016 for his role in “The Revenant” while Pitt was Oscar-nominated for performances in “Moneyball” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Tarantino has two Oscars for the screenplays of “Django Unchained” and “Pulp Fiction,” both of which he also directed.

The film, called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, will feature DiCaprio as the former star of a Western TV series. (Reuters)

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http://ift.tt/2F3hPHD March 01, 2018 at 06:32AM

Pakistan aims to revive glory of ancient Mughal city Lahore

1:40 ص Lifestyle No comments

Author:

AFP

Thu, 2018-03-01 06:48

ID:

1519877188413123100

LAHORE, Pakistan: Perched on scaffolding, restoration experts chip away at decades of grime and repair broken mosaic tiles in a bid to save the colossal murals depicting historic battles and regal ceremonies on the walls of Lahore fort.
The painstaking work is part of efforts to preserve Lahore’s crumbling architectural history as officials juggle conserving its diverse heritage with building modern infrastructure in Pakistan’s chaotic second city.
The metropolis, which once served as the capital of the Mughal empire that stretched across much of the subcontinent, has been subsumed into a myriad of civilizations across the centuries.
This rich past is most visible in the milieu of architecture salted across the Walled City of Lahore — from Hindu temples and Mughal forts to Sikh gurdwaras and administrative office built during the Raj.
“You get a history of a thousand years, 500 year-old houses and monuments and mosques, shrines and a very peaceful atmosphere,” says Kamran Lashari, director general of the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA).
Prime among them, and dating back to the 11th century, the Lahore fort was first built of mud and was then later reinforced with stone over the centuries by a long cast of Mughal emperors who oversaw its expansion and the accompanying artwork.
But periods of conflict along with searing heat, monsoon rains and years of neglect have taken a toll on the fort.
Despite the onset of decay, experts suggest the city’s vast Islamic architectural heritage could make it a contender to rival more established Silk Road travel destinations.
“Lahore can easily compete with Samarkand. It nearly matches Ispahan,” says Sophie Makariou, president of the Parisian-based National Museum of Asian Arts.
Makariou adds that its failure to shine is more to do with safety concerns that have plagued the nation after multiple attacks.
“Due to the bad reputation of Pakistan, it remains unknown,” she explains.
But as security across Pakistan continues to improve, officials are hoping to revive Lahore’s lost glory.
More than 40 conservationists with the WCLA — including engineers, architects and ceramists from across the globe — are currently working on restoring the mosaic mural on the fort’s exterior.
“It’s one of the largest murals in the world. It contains over 600 tile mosaic panels and frescos,” says Emaan Sheikh from the Agha Khan Trust for Culture.
Restoration of the mural is just part of a larger project to refurbish the fort, which includes conservation projects in the royal kitchen, the summer palace and a basement, according to WCLA’s director general Kamran Lashari.
Similar work by the WCLA has already been done to revamp the artwork at the historic Wazir Khan mosque and the Shahi Hammam — one of the only surviving Turkish Baths in the subcontinent that is approximately 400 years old.
The city’s famed Delhi Gate, which once hosted extravagant Mughal processions arriving in Lahore from the east, has also been fully restored along with dozens of homes in the Walled City.
Many of those involved in the project are optimistic.
“The cities which are most famous for tourism, you can take London, Madrid, Istanbul, Rome, all the prerequisites which are available in those cities, are available in Lahore,” claims Ahmer Malik, head of Punjab’s tourism corporation, referring to Lahore’s architectural and cultural attractions.
But not all are convinced.
Kamil Khan Mumtaz, President of Lahore Conservation Society (LCS), an advocacy organization promoting preservation projects, says the efforts run the risk of transforming the old city into a “Disneyland” to attract tourists.
“This was a pedestrian’s city. A pre-Industrial revolution modelled city. This should be conserved into that original state instead of remodeling buildings,” said Mumtaz, who is pushing for the use of traditional construction materials in restoration projects.
The calls run into fresh conflict with infrastructure plans aimed at easing the city’s traffic congestion as Lahore adds high-rise buildings, malls, flyovers and amusement parks to its cityscape.
Lahore was the first Pakistani city to unveil a metro bus service, and is now constructing an inaugural metro train that Mumtaz and fellow civil society groups say will diminish the architectural history.
The city also faces fresh challenges as it opens up to tourism.
Canadian visitor Usama Bilal complains: “There are gorgeous old colonial buildings, British era buildings but they are not well taken care of. There is no infrastructure built for tourists.”

A worker cleans a golf cart for tourists to visit the historic Mughal-era Lahore Fort in the Pakistani city of Lahore. (AFP)

A Pakistani conservationist works on the 1,450-foot long and 50-foot high picture wall at the historic Mughal-era Lahore Fort. (AFP)

Above, the historic Mughal-era Lahore Fort in the Pakistani city of Lahore. (AFP)

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http://ift.tt/2FHkDeG March 01, 2018 at 05:36AM

French Beret return with force to Paris fashion

1:35 م Lifestyle No comments

Author:

AFP

Wed, 2018-02-28 20:24

ID:

1519839024636891200

PARIS: What do Rihanna, Che Guevara nostalgics, and the Kardashian clan all have in common?
They are all bonkers about berets.
The Frenchest of hats is now also the hippest, with makers struggling to keep up with demand from everyone from pop stars to the crowned heads of Europe.
Since Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri sent out every one of her 68 models wearing one in her first autumn winter show last March, the humble Pyrenean shepherd’s hat has become the epitome of cool.
“I love berets because they’re the T-shirt of hats,” said Stephen Jones, the British master milliner who helped create the cult Dior line for Chiuri.
“Young, old, rich, poor, male, female — the beret suits everybody,” he said.
The black leather Dior version Rihanna wore to the show with such badass Black Panther attitude flew off the shelves and now sells for $999 (812 euros) on eBay.
Style icons as diverse as the Hadid sisters, the Jenner-Kardashians, the Duchess of Cambridge — a longtime fan — Meghan Markle and Princess Charlene of Monaco have all been photographed sporting berets.
Fashion critics also rejoiced at the beret’s revival with The Guardian declaring that it “may finally free us from our beanies.”
Gucci and Marc Jacobs have also got in on the act, while Laulhere, the last historic French beret maker, has been at full stretch to keep up with demand.

It has even opened a shop in Paris’ ritzy Rue St. Honore between Hermes and Prada, where sales manager Mark Saunders said some of “our bestsellers, which are covered with pearls or finished in extraordinary leathers and satins, retail at between 450 and 500 euros.”
Its more traditional “heritage” felt berets made to protect Basque and Bearnais peasants from winter snow and the summer sun sell for a much more modest 35 euros.
But retailer Sebastien Reveillard said such is the demand from fashionistas that he can never keep enough of them at his Paris est Toujours Paris (Paris is always Paris) boutique in the French capital.
“Many customers buy two and three at a time. They cannot make them fast enough for us to sell them,” he told AFP as Paris fashion week began in earnest Tuesday.
“We have sold out of some colors and if I could get my hands on more I would sell them too. Everybody — young and old — wants them.
“Not only is the beret always chic, but you can wear them for every occasion. And they last forever, the Laulhere ones are made for life,” he added.
Saunders admitted that the modest Laulhere factory, which nestles in the foothills of the Pyrenees at Oloron-Sainte-Marie, is stretched, but insisted that there were no quick fixes to meet demand.
“It takes two days to make a beret and there is an incredible amount of hand work involved. It is a very complicated process, 80 percent of it by hand.

The felting process alone takes between 11 and 18 hours, Irish-born Saunders said, using the “water from the Gave d’Aspe river right next to the factory.
“It is not easy recruiting people in such a rural area but if we moved the factory somewhere else we would not have the water which is full of minerals from the mountains.
“When you touch a finished beret you can feel them, and we would lose that.”
Saunders said the beret’s renaissance is no passing fad, but has been gathering since its present owners, Cargo, rescued Laulhere from the brink of bankruptcy in 2012.
“We realized we had something quite amazing in our hands, something that was both a fantastic fashion and luxury item which also had an incredible history and cultural importance.”
Having more than doubled the workforce to 55, Laulhere last year sold more than 300,000 berets.
With stores in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and now China clamouring for its hats, Saunders said this year they will sell even more.
“We have calls every day from shops all over the world,” he said.
Reveillard said the beret’s timeless appeal was because they were “so hugely practical. You can wear it as a kind of cap, like the farmers do, backwards like Rihanna to show the label or sideways” at a rakish angle.
A fact that was confirmed when AFP questioned beret wearers on the freezing streets of the French capital.
Florence, a 33-year-old charity worker, said you “will never look like an idiot in a beret, unlike those people who wear woolly hats in cold weather.”
Twenty-one-year-old Zulu Cecile from Bordeaux said the beret was the quintessential symbol of French style. “It is lovely to wear, goes with almost everything, and is very fashionable at the moment. What is not to like?“