Coneheads

During the late Middle Ages, most unmarried girls wore their hair loose and long. By 1360 or so, and well into the next century, European women began sporting some crazy headgear. In France women wore bourelets—wide, padded rolls on top of the hair, and there and elsewhere, they wore hennins—towering cone shaped headdresses, sometimes with draped veils.

When Isabelle of Bavaria married Charles VI of France in 1385, women began sporting egg-shaped wads of hair at each temple, adorned with a headpiece.

By the early fifteenth century, you might see a horned version, a butterfly-shaped gizmo, and a miter shape (like a bishop’s hat).  Flemish women wore a blunter version of the hennin. Italians wore turban-type designs.

Women also plucked their brows and their hairlines to achieve a high forehead underneath this hilarious headgear. (You can clearly see it in the above two portraits.)

Architects all over Europe had to redesign doorways so women wouldn’t bash into them. (The doorways, not the architects.)

Source: Schnurnberger, Let There be Clothes, p. 141

Posted at 5:47 AM

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Filed under: bourelets, fifteenth century, fourteenth century, headdresses, headgear, hennins