John Travolta Paired His Latest Beret With a Punk Leather Jacket

Up until this spring, the words “John Travolta” and “style” together would likely conjure images of his white disco suit from Saturday Night Fever, his western getup from Urban Cowboy, or his biker fit from Grease. In May, however, the Academy Award-nominated actor added another element to his sartorial oeuvre when he arrived at the premiere of his directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, wearing a pair of wire-frame glasses and a jaunty off-white beret with his black suit. Travolta’s Cannes fit, it turns out, was not a one-off. Earlier this week, at a Ramones 50th anniversary show at LA’s Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Travolta appeared wearing a biker jacket over a Ramones tee and jeans, accessorized with a jauntily tilted crimson beret.

Striding onstage alongside Linda Ramone (the widow of guitarist Johnny Ramone), Travolta was in peak form, cracking dad jokes (“I’m sorry I’m a little late, but there are so many people dying to get in here”) before introducing punk rock supergroup The Cretin Family, whose lineup includes Billie Joe Armstrong and Travis Barker. The Cretins’ Ramones tribute set was followed by a double-feature screening of Propeller One-Way Night Coach and the original Carrie from 1976, one of Travolta’s first acting credits.

Linda Ramone and Travolta onstage at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Gilbert Flores/Getty Images

Travolta has said his Cannes look was initially inspired by beret-loving directors like Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, and chosen to differentiate Travolta the director from Travolta the actor/singer/producer. It did do that, but it also resonated far beyond the Croisette, spreading like wildfire across social media and landing him on innumerable best-dressed lists. Part of this was down to the pure surprise of seeing Vincent Vega (or Danny Zuko, depending on how you roll) dressed like a caricature of a French painter, but it also reveals something bigger about the power of accessories in general and the beret in particular.

Travolta is just the latest in a long tradition of men and women who have been drawn to the beret’s combination of artistic bona fides and gallic je ne c’est quoi. Whether worn off to one side like a French Foreign Legionnaire or down over your ears like JFK Jr., few pieces of headwear carry as much cultural heft. Add to that a plethora of color options, and you’ve got a hat that can pair as well with a suit as it does with a biker jacket, provided you’ve got the confidence to pull it off—just ask John Travolta, whose beret era is just getting started.