John Travolta has wholeheartedly embraced the beret as his trademark look since his headline-making appearances at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month. At the DGA premiere Thursday of his directing debut “Propeller One-Way Night Coach,” he told Variety‘s Marc Malkin that he adopted the headwear idea to help feel like a director.

“The beret has been around for 800 years,” Travolta told Malkin. “You know, the military — it’s an old school thing. I looked at all the photographs of me for 50 years and I can’t tell you the difference. I started to not be able to differentiate and I said ‘well, you’re not an actor really.’

“So I looked up all the old school directors and they all had berets and sometimes glasses and it was very it was cliché but in a wonderful way — they were probably reflecting painters and musicians of the type.”

Travolta confided to Malkin that he now has at least 12 of the caps, which he says landed him on the Vogue, GQ and Harper’s Bazaar best-dressed lists from Cannes.

“Guys don’t have enough to do,” Travolta said. “They’re putting men in skirts because there’s a lack of something there…why not change it up? We can have fun too.”

The “Saturday Night Fever” star also said he helped style his daughter Ella, who has been accompanying him on the carpets and appears in the film. “We could have done twin berets but today we decided to go Brigitte Bardot.”

While the father-daughter duo didn’t end up matching for the evening, Ella told Variety she “loved” Travolta’s choice to don a beret immediately. “To make an amazing and artistic decision and just rock it is so cool, because so many people play fashion choices safe,” she said on the carpet. Ella also complimented her dad’s sense of style, saying “he’s so good with that, and knows what looks good.” 

Based on Travolta’s 1997 children’s book, “Propeller One-Way Night Coach” is a one-hour film available to stream on AppleTV+.

Fashion has been on his mind since his early years, Travolta said. “My brother-in-law worked for Vogue in the ’60s and Harper’s Bazaar and he would style me as a teenager. I had my first bell bottoms, my first wide belt, my first double breasted suit. I looked like Warren Beatty, Bonnie and Clyde. So I’m very aware of how [women] have more options than we do.”