headgear-msg - 2/5/08
Hats, veils and other headgear.
NOTE: See also the files: turbans-msg, fashion-msg, shoes-msg, raingear-msg, feathers-msg, gloves-msg, umbrellas-msg, veils-msg, snoods-cauls-msg.
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Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes at silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Awards
Keywords: Includes the headgear question!
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 16:53:38 GMT
nusbache at epas.utoronto.ca (Aryk Nusbacher) writes:
>Your general points are well-taken, however, and I agree. Now to the
>important question: what about the hats?
>
>Everyone in the Middle Ages except kids wore hats all the time. In
>fact, it is only slightly inaccurate to say that everyone except kids
>wore hats all the time until the mid-20th century. Hats were as much
>a part of fashion as coats and jewellery. They denoted one's trade,
>or one's social standing; they were part of one's clothing. Like
>being in the Army, you just didn't go outside without the proper headgear.
>
>Scadians are seeking to portray mediaeval and Renaissance upper-class
>people. What sort of hats do they wear?
Greetings from Lothar,
I disagree. I have looked at dozens and hundreds of
illuminations, pictures and medieval artifacts that portray people in
the civilian dress of various periods and my observation is that you
can't generalize. All through the Early Christian, Migration and
Carolingian Eras you don't see many people with hats on, although you
see an occasional crown, the women are inevitably veiled and many of the
soldiers are wearing helmets. Don't think that it is due to stylized
iconography either: some of the late antique, Byzantine and Carolingian
illuminations are more "naturalistic" than anything you'll see until the
15th c. This doesn't mean that people of this era NEVER wore hats, but
they weren't a required part of the local costume.
Representations of Early Scandinavians and later Germanic people
show men bare-headed (although you see a lot of helmets or phyrgian
caps) most of the time.
In the 11th and 12th c. it is very unusual to see a man wearing
a hat, though the women, unless they are very young or representing some
virtue, inevitably have some sort of headress on. In the late 12th and
early 13th c. little white coifs became common for men, but were by no
means an obligatory part of the fashion.
I could continue, but suffice it to say that in EVERY culture
I have looked at (except maybe Jewish culture) hats were an optional
accessory for men which were more or less common (I doubt that the well
dressed 15th c. Flemish gentleman would feel comfortable outside of his
house without some sort of hat) while most women wore something that was
more or less a derivative of a veil. Don't argue it, just start looking
through art history books and you'll see my point.
Now, I agree that the SCA does a particularly bad job on
recreating hats. This is partly due to laziness, but I think that most
hats that were worn in the Middle Ages and Renaissance just don't look
attractive to modern people. I have jokingly referred to the later
Middle Ages and the Renaissance as the "Age of Ugly Hats". Women's
headgear beyond the simple veil is hard to get right and is a bitch to
wear. I pity a woman in a steeple hennin in a high wind or a low hall.
Other factors are that hats are HOT and since they were
"optional" many people ignore them to concentrate on their costume.
>There's the broad-brimmed hat, worn out-of-doors to keep the sun off
>the neck.
Fashionable? Rarely. Matching the clothing? Not usually.
If you mean the felt "cavalier" hat, I agree. Mostly OOP. If you
mean the straw hats, I can show you documentation of the straw hat being
used from Ancient Greece to the 16th c. with a lapse during the Imperial
Roman period. It was never fashionable, but it was always worn by
travellers and people out in the sun. There is a Flemish altar piece
that has St. Maurice in full Gothic plate armor wearing.... a simple
straw hat that is virtually identical to the ones the peasants are
wearing in the illuminations to the Tres Riche Heures 30 years before.
I wear an "Amish" style straw hat to summer events. It looks OOP
but I can document it to the 15th c. although it is probably an
anachronism with a cotehardie.
>What about the great Scadian national headgear? The veil with the
>circlet over top? Well by gosh you can wear that with any sort of
>clothing, any time period, day wear or evening wear, court garb or
>field garb, and why? Was it a commonly-worn head covering throughout
>the ages?
Well, if you consider that very few women were high nobles who
could afford crowns it was NEVER a common head covering. Once again, the
veil appears in some form or another from Ancient Greece, through Roman
times (albeit for Vestal virgins) and on into the late Middle Ages. It
was pretty well discarded by women of the upper ranks in the late 15th
and 16th c. but it persisted into the 17th c. among the lower classes in
some form or another.
Using a crown or metal circlet to hold your veil or head-dress
on is very period. If you look hard enough you can find example of it.
There is a 15th c. ms. illumination of Cretien de Troyes presenting a
copy of "Citie des Dames" to her patron, who is a duchess. Her Grace is
wearing a modified crown over a bicornate hennin!
>Does anybody know what the headgear of an English baron was before
>1600? A prize to anyone who can tell me. It wasn't a coronet.
His hair. The Bayeux tapestry only has crowns being worn by
kings on state occasions. Even William and Harold appear without crowns
in the battle scenes.
Failing that, on high state occasions, English barons tended to
wear caps of maintenance (red with ermine trim) on high state occasions.
They also wore matching robes. These outfits never seem to have been
worn otherwise. Otherwise, they wore whatever headgear was fashionable
at the time, and displayed their wealth in other ways. (This is based on
15th c. mss. illuminations. I doubt that it is accurate prior to 1400.)
In the 14th c. they might have worn gowns with their arms
embroidered on them, but without a cap. Once again, this was ceremonial
costume, never worn otherwise.
>It has recently become fashionable for companions of the Laurel to
>wear metal wreaths of laurels around their heads. Very Scadian.
Very Italianate. There are 15th and 16th c. paintings of victorious
generals and popes wearing a crown of laurel, and I wouldn't put it past
baroque craftsmen to guild the damned things. Admittedly this was a
ceremonial headgear. It wasn't worn every day. But crowning someone with
a wreath of laurels at a laureling ceremony would not be totally out of
line with period customs.
>So why aren't people encouraged to wear hats?
1) Extra Effort to make.
2) Different skills required
3) Bitch to find decent hat felt for some styles
4) Hot
5) Inconvenient to wear
6) Inconsistant with modern notions of fashion, or just
butt-ugly
>And that is how the award system has kicked the hell out of authentic
>headgear.
Authentic headgear hasn't really taken off. Neither has really
authentic costume. Do you know what your persona's underwear, hosen,
doublet and shoes looked like? Do you have them made? (For the record I
would have to answer Yes to the first and no to the second).
>And don't you go blaming Erroll Flynn, either. Robin Hood knew enough not to
>go out without a hat on...
But Maid Marian, the Evil Sheriff, Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck
didn't.... :)
Lothar
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: sclark at epas.utoronto.ca (Susan Clark)
Subject: Re: Awards
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1993 00:40:40 GMT
Summary: Look kids! easy women's hats.....
Keywords: Includes the headgear question!
Greetings....
Let's put an end to this idea that women's hats from the Middle
Ages and Renaissance are both hard to do and ugly.
First, there is the veil and wimple combination. Almost as
easy as the veil alone, and seen in illuminations through the fourteenth
century.
Second, there is the hairnet, chinstrap/coif/wimple and linen
band or crespinette combination. Easy to make, nifty to wear, and
perfect for the second half of the thirteenth century into the fourteenth.
Third, for you later period types, are the variety of simple small
hats seen in the Italian Renaissance period. Once again, elegant, easy
to make, and even quite comfortale on a hot day.
For 16th century types, there are a wide variety of easy hats one
can make, from a simple linen coif (embroider it in blackwork! Impress your
firiends!) to flat hats, to the "biggens", a cap which can be made in either
velvet or simple linen, depending on the class of the wearer. People
who wear French hoods tell me they aren't bad, either, once you get
the hang of them.
I am noticibly skipping the hennins and huge horned things which
one sees in the last half of the fourteeth and the fifteenth centuriees,
but they can be done well (and when they are....WOW!). The ubiquitous
"padded roll", sometimes shaped by wire, is an OK compromise.
Hats make the outfit, take it from "nice" to "oooooh!"
Regards
Nicolaa de Bracton of Leicester
sclark at epas.utoroto.ca
SusanCarroll-Clark
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes at silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Awards
Keywords: Includes the headgear question!
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1993 18:14:53 GMT
In article <1993Jul8.202536.3368 at epas.toronto.edu> nusbache at epas.utoronto.ca (Aryk Nusbacher) writes:
>
>All right, so males in the Byzantine and Carolingian empires didn't
>wear hats outdoors? Fine. All those Byzantine and Carolingian folks
>are off the hook. And all those Phrygian caps on those Greeks and
>Franks are an optical illusion. But what about the rest of the Middle
>Ages?
But it wasn't universal. And, you never see a clerical figure with a hat
on in the iconography, presumably the better to see their tonsures.
>What about women?
Pretty much universally veiled unless they are representing some sort of
allegorical figure, though some women are depicted as bare-headed with
their hair up in some early Christian period mss.
>And all these helmet-wearers? They wore their helmets all the time
>like Hagar the Horrible?
As you should know, helmets are heavy and hot to wear for long periods
of time. Remember the Norse got beat at Stamford Bridge partially
because they were caught without their armor. Or are you being
facetious?
>T> In the 11th and 12th c. it is very unusual to see a man wearing
>T>a hat...[in illuminations]
>
>Which means they didn't wear hats?
They might have worn them, especially out of doors, but they weren't
part of the dominant fashion. If it was fashionable, you surely would
have seen William and Harold and their friends wearing hats in the
Bayeux tapestry. As it is, only the women are covered, and then only
with simple veils.
>T>early 13th c. little white coifs became common for men, but were by no
>T>means an obligatory part of the fashion.
>
>And there were no other hats in the 13th century? Just those little
>white coifs? And the women were still just wearing those veils, eh?
>
>Perhaps they all had central heating.
No the 13th c. woman's headdress consisted of more than just the veil.
There was the wimple which went around the neck and the chin and the
veil that went over the head and a small "pill box" hat that went on top
of that, through most of the century. Look at the Manessa codex (c.
1299) or the figures on Chartres Cathedral to get a sense of what was
worn. I'm not an expert on women's hats so I don't know all the
variations in fashion from decade to decade and region to region.
For men, hood were built into some robes and guardcorps making a
very warm garment.
>T> Now, I agree that the SCA does a particularly bad job on
>T>recreating hats. This is partly due to laziness, but I think that most
>T>hats that were worn in the Middle Ages and Renaissance just don't look
>T>attractive to modern people.
>
>... as opposed to houppelandes, which look just great?
There are some houpplelandes (especially some of the Burgundian
ones) that make you look like a chicken with a perm. I wouldn't wear
them on a bet. There are also some houppelandes that look terrific to
the modern eye. There were just some medieval fashions that don't agree
with modern conceptions of beauty - the Norman haircut, the 14th
pouter-pigeon cotehardie, the 16h. bombasted doublet, some of the 15th
c. houppelandes, wearing two or more bright primary colors next to each
other, excessive puffing and slashing, etc.
> ... as opposed to crowns and coronets which are always
> executed with the utmost in taste?
>
>Hell, you're from the Middle Kingdom, owners of the No 10 tin can crowns...
There are no guarantees that anything in the SCA will be
executed with the utmost taste. I agree that one of the sets of SCA
crowns (the earlier versions) is butt-ugly/fantasy. I'd love to see them
replaced with something that looks like it came from a 14th c. ms. But
I'm biased.
>T>I have jokingly referred to the later
>T>Middle Ages and the Renaissance as the "Age of Ugly Hats". Women's
>T>headgear beyond the simple veil is hard to get right and is a bitch to
>T>wear.
>
> ... as opposed to the dresses, which are easy to get
> right and easy to wear?
It was an age of ugly costumes too, but the hats struck me as
being distinctly ugly. Some dresses are deceptively simple to get right
- the cotehardie isn't that hard to sew once you get it fitted right,
Italian Renaissance gowns also aren't that terribly difficult to
produce and T-tunics are a breeze to turn out. Hats require felt,
blocking, wire stiffening, etc. in addition to sewing. Most seamstesses
don't know a whole lot about hats, since we don't make them mundanely.
>Millinery is a craft like any other. There are lots of Scadians who
>make just dandy hats, even though it's tough to do. There are lots
>who wear hats, even though they can be "a bitch to wear".
Yup. There are also bunch of great armorers and jewellers, but
they're scarcer than costumers.
>And granted, a "steeple hennin" is hard to make and wear. Is a
>v-necked gown, with its miles of cloth and it's weirdly fitting waist,
>easy to make or wear?
Actually, yes. I've talked with a woman who made one. Once you
get the waist right, it is comfortable (almost "orthopedic") to wear and
isn't that hard to sew. Admittedly a long train would be a hassle, but
you don't have to make the dress that way.
Is a 16th c. doublet and slops easy to make or wear?
(Comment about hats being hot accidently deleted)
70% of body heat is lost through the head. A hood or veil that
covers the head and keeps heat and moisture from escaping out of a
garment at the neck is very hot on a hot day. I can wear hosen and a
cotton cotehardie at Pennsic when its 85o F with no sweat (literally)
because my head is cooled by the breeze. If I put on the hood that goes
with it, I start to melt. I had an ex-girlfriend at Pennsic who tried
to wear a veil as a sunshade, but had to give it up as being too hot.
>T>used from Ancient Greece to the 16th c. with a lapse during the Imperial
>T>Roman period.
>
>No way. They didn't wear hats until the 14th century (except coifs).
>You told us that. \8-)
Sorry, I meant hats as a part of fashionable attire. As work
clothes (helmets for soldiers, straw hats for field hands) hats never
went out of style.
>You've already said that nobody always wore hats. Except women.
>
Precisely, but I'm fairly certain that even women might have
gone uncovered at times - as children, or unmarried maidens.
>
>T>Once again, the
>T>veil appears in some form or another from Ancient Greece, through Roman
>T>times (albeit for Vestal virgins) and on into the late Middle Ages. It
>T>was pretty well discarded by women of the upper ranks in the late 15th
>T>and 16th c...
>
>Except in ... what ... all of southern Europe?
Well, in church or on the street women might have worn a veil in
Southern Europe. When a woman was "indoors" even if she was in the
courtyard or on the loggia of a house, she didn't wear a veil. I own a
book of 16th c. Venetian woodcuts by Vellochio (pretty crummy mostly,
but I trust his drawings of Venetians) which shows women veiled in the
street, but uncovered (or even with their hair down) while at home. All
the Italian Renaissance portraits I have seen have the women wearing
minimal headcovering, but with their hair carefully dressed in other
ways. I'll grant that a picture of a woman with her hair loose is very
rare, but the elaborate headdresses of the Northern Renaissance and the
previous century had pretty well dissappeared in Italy by the 15th c..
>
>T> Using a crown or metal circlet to hold your veil or head-dress
>T>on is very period.
>
>T>copy of "Citie des Dames" to her patron, who is a duchess. Her Grace is
>T>wearing a modified crown over a bicornate hennin!
>
>Which is the same as wearing a veil held on by a circlet?
Well it's close and it was the only specific reference I could
think of immediately that is commonly reproduced in texts on the Middle
Ages. Now that I think of it, I'm not so certain that metal circlets
were so common. I think most women just used pins. The only metal
circlet I can think of is being worn by a 14th c. dandy in an
illumination of the King of France entertaining the members of the order
of the Star. It is reproduced on the cover of Fabulous Feasts and might
be from one of the copies of Froissart's Chronicles.
I agree that the large, gaudy crown over a simple veil isn't
quite the thing though.
>
>And who unsexed poor Chretien? Probably that nasty Christine de Pisan...
>
Oops, my mistake. I meant Christine.
>T>Very Italianate. There are 15th and 16th c. paintings of victorious
>T>generals and popes wearing a crown of laurel,
>
>Which means they wore them around all the time, right? Hey, Fabio,
>get me my number three wreath, I'm going to a party! Monsignor
>Venetti, kindly hand me that wreath of laurels, I'm presiding over the
>Curia...
Well, no, not all the time, but on formal occasions it wouldn't
be too jarring to my sensibilities. Maybe crowning a new Laurel with a
laurel wreath should be part of the Laureling ceremony, but the new Peer
should only wea