Constructing the Headdresses of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Centuries
by Marie Vibbert (Lyonnete Vibert)
[email protected]

From the comics pages to Halloween costumes, we continue to see representations of the
dynamic headdresses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Social and technological forces
joined to create a time of great change in fashion which has never wholly left the public
imagination. The purpose of this paper is to explore the development and possible construction
of men and women’s headdresses of this time, primarily those of France and those countries with
immediate French contact: England, Germany, and the Low Countries. Due to a paucity of
extant evidence, the majority of research concerns representations in illustration or sculpture.

The practice of veil-wearing was not so strict in the fourteenth century as the fifteenth; at least, it
is common to find representations of women without them. Women are depicted wearing either
uncovered hair, a hood, or a veil.i

The hood is a ubiquitous clothing item in the fourteenth century, worn by both genders. It is
common in depictions from the 12th and 13th centuries, but by the 14th had become more fitted,
and developed an increasingly narrower and longer tail, called by costumers the liripipe. Fashion
dictated a long liripipe, and over time it must have become an encumbrance. Illustrations depict
the liripipe being tucked into belts or flung over the shoulder to prevent it dragging on the
ground or entangling legs.

Under their hoods or veils, women wore their hair braided and arranged predominantly in a style
referred to as the templeteii - a style that framed the face with vertical columns of braid.

Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince mentions that at this

time, written records refer to men and women wearing hats as
well as hoods. The frequency of mention is greater than in
previous records, showing the hat has come to a new
prominence as an object of personal adornment.

Hats at this time are worn at the top of the head, and tend to be
in a pill-box style. Fur caps are popular, and men's caps in particular were heavily adorned. The
importance of the hood was such that, frequently we find depictions of both a hat and a hood,
either the hat worn on top of the hood, or the hood worn draped around the shoulders, leaving the
head free for additional adornment.
The Museum of London has published in their book Dress Accessories two archeological finds
significant to this discussion: fourteenth-century human hair plaits, and wire headdress frames.

The plaits are of human hair, stitched with silk thread to maintain its shape, and sewn onto a
narrow band of silk from which octagonal mounts were sewn and removed. The hair piece is
sized to hang on the sides of the head, folded in half, like the braids in the images of women
wearing the templet style.iii

Therefore, I suspect that the templet was held together by being sewn, or by binding with ribbons
or twisted threads. We know artificial templets where bound with twisted threads and sewn, and
these were worn in addition to the lady’s own hair.

I conjecture that for some of these templets a wire may be utilized, in place of or in conjunction
with a silken band across the forehead, to hold both hairstyle and veil in place. Whatever the
reason, we know that shortly afterward, wire headdress frames appear in the archeological
record, and that these frames were frequently wrapped in silk thread, lending them a lovely hair-
like appearance. (This is pure conjecture, that a hair-like appearance was desired, but there are
portraits that show an edge on a headdress that is braided or twisted, looking like human hair,
tawny or brown in appearanceiv, and the human-hair plait was bound with a twisted yarn of
human hair, which this may be a technological advance upon.)

The wire headdress frames in Dress Accessories all come from a late 14th-Century deposit were
preservation conditions were remarkably good – these wires would have decayed elsewhere.
Eleven are covered in silk thread, four are uncovered. The wires are drawn, range in diameter
from 1mm to 3mm, and some have their ends flattened and pierced with a small hole, others
have their ends hammered into a taper or triangular cross-sectionv. It is clear to see how these
were means for fastening the wire about the head, either with thread passed through holes on
either end and tied, or by hooking the wires to each other or burying them in the hair.

One Silk-covered, copper alloy wire headdress frame is an especial find. It has traces of a silk
veil still sewn to it, (which is tabby-woven in an open texture making it likely semi-transparent
when it was new), and it forms two complete loops. Smaller silk-wrapped wires have been
coiled decoratively around it making it thicker, but, more to my own excitement, making it
similar in appearance to the narrow bands of decoration going over and around some of the later,
smaller, more bun-like templets.vi

By 1400 these templet plaits have been bound ever tighter, and instead of hanging by the sides of
the face are coiled up against the temples, and, as I mentioned, depicted with a narrow band
encircling them, in addition to the circlet or head-band above. This style comes to be called the
“caul”vii. Some depictions right around 1400 have an almost staple-shaped headdress, the band
across the forehead alike in thickness to the two small templets, producing a short frame of the
temple, with a net behind.viii

The word caul originates referring to close-fitting caps, (commonly referred to in the SCA as
“baby hats”), which are worn by women and men alike. Thus circa 1374 Chaucer writes in his
Troylus. “And makyn hym a howve [hood] above a calle.”ix

By the end of the fourteenth century, women’s skull-caps had fallen out of use in favor of
netting, and so the usage of caul changes as well. See this quote from around 1391, “A maner
krokede strikes..like to the werk of a womanes calle.” Not only is caul now specialized for
women, it is described as being made up of crooked stripes – which I conjecture refers to the zig-
zags of netting, and by 1540 the OED has usage of ‘calle’ to mean a net or spider’s web.x
 My conjecture is that the caul style evolved from the templete, and
relied on a simple support structure - possibly a circlet of wire with
ribbon and netting sewn to it. This exploded view shows how the hair
would first be arranged, and then covered with netting, which may be
sewn directly to a supporting circlet. Loops of ribbon or other more
flexible material may have depended below the hair buns to provide for a
more adjustable shape. At any rate, a ‘braided’ appearance is common
in depictions.

As time wore on the cauls became more defined and large, wider. Fashion moves toward
extremes and then abandons them when they have reached the limit of practicality.

The horn-like look of the cauls then moves higher on the head, seeking height rather than width.
(Though perhaps the simple physics of maintaining a large structure more stably is at work.)

But as the headdresses change, the basic structure evolves simply. It’s my theory that all of these
headdresses can be achieved with a model of a circlet and supporting wires, though the addition
of a rigid cap-like structure helps support height.
In her work “Dress and Fashions c.1470”, Anne Sutton quotes an unknown Burgundian
chronicler who found the changes in fashion around him worthy of mention. He writes, “In this
year [1467] ladies and young gentlewomen…. wore headdresses … in the shape of a round
bonnet which narrowed above, some to a height of half an ell or three quarters and some
lower….”xi

The best definition I can find for the length of an “ell” is in the OED, where it is explained that
an ell was a form of the cubit – the ancient measurement of one’s forearm. However, at the end
of its use the ell varied in length from country to country, from 45 inches (that’d be a long hat!)
in England to 27 inches in the Low Countries. Considering Burgundy’s ties to Flemish lands, I’d
go with the 27 inch measurement, making a hat half-an-ell tall to be about a foot. This works
well with the visual evidence. I looked at several portraits of women in tall hennins. I measured
the length of their eye, corner-to-corner, and then the length of their hat along its longest axis. I
then “converted” this measurement by comparing the length of the woman’s eye to my own, so
that, were I the woman, the hat would be proportional to me. Although foreshortening caused by
the three-quarter profile of most sitters will skew this result low, I found when limiting myself to
only profile pictures, even the tallest hennins measured not more than two feet, and they varied
from eleven to sixteen inches, mostly. As you can see, the claims of some costume historians
that these hats were as tall as nine feet are greatly exaggeratedxii. Even still, when I wear a two-
foot hennin, folks comment on how very tall it is. Remember that two feet is one third the height
of a six foot person.
Cheunsoon Song and Lucy Roy Sibley in their article, “The Vertical Headdress of Fifteenth
Century Northern Europe”, express a common confusion. “While previously discussed
headdresses do have a more or less logical explanation of evolving from the caul and bourrelet of
the fourteenth century, it is not clear how the fashion of the cone-shaped headdress began.”xiii
We have already seen how the predominant styles leading up to the hennin were a series of horn-
shapes. How could this have developed into a seemingly new paradigm – the cone?

The illustration given with the above text of Song and Sibley’s article shows the types of
headdresses evolved from the caul and bourrelet, arrows leading from cauls and bourrelet to
cauls-with-bourrelet or the higher cauls and the horn-shaped veils, with the cone-shaped hats off
alone together, even separated into their own box. Unlike the other headdresses, the hennin and
truncated hennin are not drawn with veils. This, in my opinion, is the source of most of the
confusion on their development. Until the very end of the style in the 1490s, these tall hats are
never worn without a veil covering the “cone” completely. The veils, however, are uniformly
semi-transparent, and show up best at the tip of the hat, where the veil folds, falling against itself
for greater opacity. This is the source of the common misconception that these hats had a veil
attached only at the tip.

Men’s hats are less flamboyant, but like the women’s they evolve from the styles that came
before. Considerably less structure is called for. The movement is from a hood-dominated look
to a rolled look to the eventual emergence of the “Richard the Third” style brimmed cap.
At first the rolled-up hood flops forward, or the bulk of the head area of the hood forms a
sagging deflated sack on top, with everything else wrapped turban-like around it.xiv But as time
wears on, the crown of the bourrelet is drawn tighter into the roll, disappearing altogether from
veiw, until the liripipe and the shoulder drape become so many dags hanging off a padded rollxv.
This rolled headdress is referred to as a bourrelet. The word “bourrelet” is documented in use in
1490 to mean a padded roll worn atop the head by the OED, and the OED hypothesizes that it
comes from the old French word bourrel meaning, “mass of flocks or wadding”.xvi
i
See, for example Scott, p. 41 (illustration 30), Newton, p. 51 (illustration 17), and page 79 (illustration 24)
for images of groups of women together, some with veils, some with hoods, some bare-headed.
ii
Templet (or templette) first comes into use, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, around 1530, to
describe hair-ornamentation. It is simply a feminization of temple, referring to the forehead.
iii
Dress Accessories, p. 291
iv
The Arolfini Marriage, for one, and the portrait of Van Eck’s wife, for another, both c. 1430s. This is later
than the style which we are discussing, but it is also only later that such vivid photo-realistic portraits are available.
We will discuss later on how I feel the headdress of Madame Van Eck and Madame Arolfini is a direct descendant
of the fourteenth century templet.
v
Dress Accessories, p. 293-296
vi
For many examples, Scott, p. 51-58, particularly the funerary brasses on 51 and 58. Joan Reskymmer, c.
1410, illustration 53 (on page 58 of Scott) very clearly has a hard thick line aroundthe base of her templets and
across her forehead.
vii
Specifically by costume historians. It is unknown if this hair style was called anything like in period.
viii
See Chaucer reciting before an elegant audience, c. 1400, (Scott, p. 98), or the funerary portrait of Lady
Arderne, c. 1400, (Scott, p. 53).
ix
This quote is given by the OED in its definition of “caul”, however, looking up the line in context in the
Riverside Chaucer (p524), it is l ine 775 of book three of “Troilus and Criseyde, “…as ye women demen alle,/ That
for to hold in love a man in honde,/ And hym hire life and deere hearte calle,/ And maken hym an howve above a
calle - / I meene, as love another in this while - / She doth hireself a shame and hym a gyle.” The phrase is then used
as a metaphor for deception – a hood over a cap. Therefore this line may more likely refer to the female headdress
than the male.
x
This quote, and the alternate definitions of “calle” are from the Oxford English Dictionary (online edition,
accessed March 2006) definition of “caul”.

All illustrations are by Grace Vibbert/ Milesent Vibert.

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xi
Sutton, p. 6
xii
From a 1970s costuming book I hesitate to mention should it appear in my list of sources! This costumer
claimed the hats had iron counter-weights and were decorated at the tip with flags. Popular misconceptions about
these headdresses abound.
xiii
Song and Sibley, p. 10
xiv
See, for example, Scott, p. 98 – the man and woman in the lower left corner of a crowd listening to
Chaucer read, c. 1400, are both wearing “flopped over” bourrelets.
xv
See Scott, p. 68-9, three men in bourrelets, moving from “flopped” to one that is almost completely rolled
to one that is completely rolled. See also two portraits of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, c. 1411, Bradley et
al, p. 83
xvi
OED online edition, accessed March, 2006, definition of “bourrelet”.