Cop it Sweet

A few months ago my friend Sapphire and I went down the coast to Geelong for our annual vintage hunting trip. One of the items I bought that day was this little gendarme-style hat, by Prada. It was Sapphire in fact who first picked it up out of a jumble on an enormous table, but she wasn’t interested in it and cast it aside.

It is based on a French kepi. This style of hat was most commonly associated with the French military and police uniforms. The first versions appeared in the mid nineteenth century, and were worn without a chinstrap (it’s missing on my own sadly). They became well-known during the Crimean War, and can be seen worn by French officers of that conflict in the photograph below.

A little while later when I made it to that table, I tried it on the abandoned hat and was immediately entranced. The tag dangling off it declared it to cost $8. Later, when I went to pay for it and another straw hat, the man at the till chuckled over it, amazed that I would wear it. “It’s cute!” I declared, and upon request, modelled it for him. He had to agree it was charming. Even sweeter was the subsequent discovery that it was actually 50% off on top.

Photo: March 2017