Coppola - The Sicilian Golf Cap
Sicily has several
golf courses, all designed in the last decade. But golf caps have been popular
on the island for two centuries. This is more than a random coincidence.
Sometime during the early years of the nineteenth century, when Ferdinand
I was king of Sicily, British troops came to Sicily following Napoleon's
occupation of mainland Italy. The expected invasion of Sicily never materialized,
so they spent their time hunting. And so the English gamekeeper's cap was
introduced in Sicily, where it came to be called the coppola.
While hunting in the mountains around Ficuzza, where there was a forest
and royal lodge, King Ferdinand was usually accompanied by a number of British
diplomats, military officers and business men. Britain's interest in protecting
Sicily was more than geopolitically strategic. Sicilian sulphur was as important
to Britain's military might as to its industrial revolution. Dressed in
tweed, the keepers administered the royal hunts of boar, pheasant, hare,
wild cat and the occasional deer.
The tweed hunting caps, essentially berets with visors, were a novelty in Sicily. In that era traditional
country costume was in a state of evolution, with the Sicilian aristocracy
beginning to imitate the British, whereas previously the Spanish and French
modes of dress were more influential. Tweed ushered in a style that emphasized
a relaxed image, placing the hunter's sartorial patterns in harmony with
his environment. No more bright, eye-catching colors in the woods and bush.
The caps were part of this trend.
Aristocrats rarely wore coppolas, but the caps - and a certain Italianate
interpretation of English style - are still present in Sicilian fashion
today. Autumn finds Sicily's men's shops full of tweed and khaki.
The coppola is a reasonably faithful imitation of the British cap, though
its proportions are sometimes altered slightly. It has the virtue of being
inexpensive and easy to make. Produced in light cotton, it offers perfect
protection from the Sicilian sunshine. If you haven't already noticed, its
simplest style is identical to the golf cap, which shares the same British
pedigree. (Scots greenskeepers were drawn from the same class as gamekeepers
and farmers in Britain and in faraway Sicily.)
The hat's popularity among the common folk eventually prompted the barons
and their agents, the despised gabelloti of history and legend, to
refer to any submissive farmer as "una buona coppola" or
"a good coppola." In the latter nineteenth century, as rural mobsters
gradually imposed a degree of control over the countryside, they used the
same phrase in referring to citizens unlikely to interfere in their organization's
criminal activities.
Finally, in the 1990s, a number of Italian designers revived the style,
which had originated in the 1960s, of colorful coppolas for young people
in anything but brownish tweeds and grayish patterns. The designer coppola
is probably the most "Sicilian" item of apparel that exists today.
Here's where to find it:
Luan: Via Bara all' Olivella 113,
Palermo (also Siciliarte at the Palermo Airport).
La Coppola Storta: Corso Umberto
122 (Mirella Panarello), Taormina; Via dell' Orologio 25, Palermo; also
at Palermo Airport and at 246 Mott Street in New York.
