Let’s Accessorize with Medieval Hats
Clothing was a third of every medieval person’s yearly budget because of how labor intensive and resource-draining cloth was to make. That does not mean that your average medieval burgher ignored fashion, however. They found smaller ways, like fancy accessories, to make the clothing they had rock.
One favorite weapon in the closet-freshening arsenal was the hat. Getting a trendy cap made any surcoat shine.
Here were some options.
Phrygian Caps
Early in the Middle Ages, everyone was still trying to be Roman. One of the things they copied was the Phrygian cap. Guys would wear it everywhere. It was a soft cap with a tip that bent forward. It has a history of being associated either with free Roman citizens or folks from Anatolia. Either way, it was incredibly popular with guys until the 1000’s.
It never really went away, either. It just adjusted to more modern times. It acquired a small brim in the 1000’s, and the chapeau a bec looked much like a Phrygian cap with a brim and beak.
Fancy and Practical Straw Hats
Round hats made of straw as a concept go back to the ancient Egyptians, and Graeco-Roman folks used them as far back as Ceasar’s time. As far as Europe is concerned though, the first paintings depicting people in straw hats are from the 1000’s.
They were often simple domes made by plaiting material such as oat or wheat straw. As time passed, the dome acquired a brim and a bit of a defined crown so that they look like what we see today.
The pictures of people wearing straw hats tend to depict people of either sex working in the fields, which would imply that it was really a peasant thing- the references in Shakespeare also suggest that it was associated with manual laborers. However, Margaret Scott claims aristocrats and wealthy folks also wore them as protection from the sun.
Une Coquette in Une Barbette (and Wimple, and Coif)
Men and women both wore a close-fitting cap that tied under the chin for centuries. This cap was called a coif, and men continued to wear this cap for centuries to come, under basically everything. It’s the white cap you see on laborers in book of hours and on 16th-century portraits.
In the 1200’s, however, women moved to a pair of linen strips that circled the head, covered the ears, and then looped under the chin. This was the barbette, and it could be combined with fancy hats or hair decorations. Another cloth could be looped around the neck, and this was the wimple. We now think of wimples as cloth that covers the head, but when they first arrived, they looked more like tight scarves.
A fillet was very similar to a barbette, except it skipped the chin strap and existed largely so women could pin a veil to it and cover their hair in a romantic way. As the centuries wore on, the decorations the fillet and barbette showcased grew fancier.
As has been pointed out in an earlier post (and was picked up from a Snappy Dragon YouTube video,) coifs and veils could keep the hair clean, so it might have kept its popularity because it was practical.
What The Heck Is A Liripipe? And Why Is It On The Ubiquitous Hood?
Another piece of headgear that stayed popular for generations with few alterations was the hood. By the 10th century, you see people wearing simple hoods with peaked crowns. There could be a piece attached to this hood that covered the neck, and this turned the hood into a goget. The hood could go over a coif.
Hoods then became the spear-half of the barbette: an originally simple decoration that grew into an ostentatious display of wealth. By the 1300’s, the fashionable gentleman had hoods with a drooping peak and decorations like a round stuffed band. They could be made of things like velvet or fur too. It even came with a flat band called the becca that could tie to a guy’s belt so that he never lost his very fancy hood.
To me, the most notable decoration was the liripipe. It was a long thin tube that was attached to the crown of the hood and could come down to the feet.
Not that women did not get fancy with their hoods. They layered up cloth to make peaked or rounded hoods with embroidery on the edges. There’s a Welsh Viking episode where a guest tries to recreate a hood like Elizabeth of York’s in the most adorable way possible, if you want to see how decorative a hood can get.
The Famous Hennin
Of course, the hat that screams ‘The Middle Ages’ is the hennin. This is the stiff hat with a tall point you see in entirely too many illustrations.
This started out in the 1400’s, a truly bizarre time for fashion. Medieval silhouettes were slim and low-profiled before this, but the hennin popped up like a hitch-hiker’s thumb. Wire was used to create a pyramid or cone and then covered with cloth and topped by a veil.
Initially the top of the hennin was flat and you can see pictures in which the women wearing them only have the one wisp of cloth coming off the top. Then over a period of about 50 or so years, the hennin grew pointier and more elaborate: more embroidery, more veil, etc. There was the butterfly hennin, which built a pair of wings out of wire and covered it in a veil, the flowerpot hennin, which looked like its namesake, and a flurry of other types. Burgundians went all in for the look.
It went out of fashion by the 1600’s, but boy, did it leave a mark.
Conclusion:
There was a profusion of fancy hats to choose from in the Middle Ages, and the ones I included in this post barely scratch the surface of your choices. Some of them were practical and some were about strutting in your fancy duds. A lot of them did both.
What this all means is that there was chance to get creative on a budget, so people did because people always do. It is kind of our thing, as humans.
Another thing to consider is that, even though medieval trends didn’t change as rapidly as 21st century trends do, they did change. A 13th century dude wouldn’t be caught dead in a Phrygian cap, and a 10th century hood didn’t look like a 14th century hood. Next time you write some historical fiction or cosplay a certain time period, think about the hats.
And for the love of all that is holy, don’t default to the hennin.
Sources:
13th Century: Coif, Barbette and Wimple | All Things Medieval (ruthjohnston.com)
Phrygian cap | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica
Medievalists.net 10 Fun Fashion Facts From the Middle Ages, Daniele Cybulskie
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Straw Hats, Their History and Manufacture, by Harry Inwards (written in the 1940 or so, so take that with whatever grain of salt you like.)
Research post: Medieval straw hats in art | HANDCRAFTED HISTORY (He’s selling hats and seems to be based in Sweden.)
Clothing History: Men’s Hats and Headgear — Bellatory (Also, selling hats.)
Female headgear in the middle ages — Postej & Stews (postej-stew.dk)
Medieval Clothing: Hennin. History of the hennin, uses and styles. (medievalbritain.com)
Some of this is from memory. I did a lot of reading in order to make sure Brynhild, Bigitte, Karl, and Alfred were properly attired, but the sources have been lost to time and my poor organization skills.