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The French Hood – What It Is and What It Is Not

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The French Hood – What It Is and What It Is Not The French Hood – What it is and what it is not By THL Alliette Delecourt (mka Irina Lubomirska) 1 A note on language The headdress we are discussing is commonly referred to as “the French hood”. This name is an English invention, possibly because the hood made its way to England from France, although it was likely introduced by Mary Tudor (Henry VIII’s sister), rather than Anne Boleyn. This style of headdress was worn not just in France, but also very commonly in the Low Countries (Flanders, Belgium, etc). I have also seen portraits with very similar hoods worn in Austria. It is telling that there is no French word or phrase for “French hood”. In this paper, I use the expression “French hood” for simplicity, but bear in mind that it is a misnomer. French hood – what it is not Identifying what the French hood is not is the easy part of this paper. The popular depiction of French hoods is a rigid headdress with a crescent-shaped protrusion on top, often decorated with jewels. That is certainly how the French hood has been portrayed in movies – the examples below are screenshots from “The Other Boleyn Girl”, “Anne of a Thousand Days” and “A Man for All Seasons” respectively. The popular costuming reference “Tudor Tailor” similarly presents the French hood as a one-piece headdress, featuring a rigid brim with a stand-up crescent, a veil/fall at the back and a pleated organza strip at the front. 1 This paper is copyright of Irina Lubomirska. It may be used for SCA or educational purposes, provided appropriate credit is given. To use for any other purposes, please seek permission by emailing [email protected] Note on images : Most images used in this paper are digital copies of artworks of long-dead artists and are therefore public domain. However, there are a number of photographs of funerary sculpture that are fundamental for this paper. I have contacted the photographers and have written permission from them to use the images for this purpose. Links to the source of the image are provided. 1 The pictures below are from page 149 of Tudor Tailor. This is how the French hood has been commonly constructed in the SCA. I believe that construction is wrong and it is good to see that it is gradually changing. How do we know that the popular reconstruction is wrong? Contradicting evidence One of the problems of reconstructing from portraits is that we only see two dimensions. Headdresses are very three dimensional. We can’t take the picture and rotate it to see the profile, to examine it in three dimensions. It is necessary to find images or art forms that allow us to view the headdress from all dimensions. IMAGES All profile images of ladies wearing the French hood show that the hood sits flat on the wearer’s head. Three examples are below. I have numerous other images. There is not a single image showing the stand-up crescent where the sitter is pictured in profile. They all show a multi-layered headdress. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Portrait de femme – c1550s Mary Tudor, Queen of England 1553 - 1558 Anne de Bretagne, early 1500s 2 SCULPTURE Being three-dimensional, sculpture, especially funerary sculpture provides the best visual evidence of French hood construction. All show a flat multi-layered head-dress. Below are just some examples. Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 2 Wife of Thomas Cave, 1558 3 Jane Scaregills, 1547 Lady Fulke Greville 4 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 5 Tomb of Henry Neville, Fifth Earl of Philippine Wielant (1521) Tomb of George Talbot, (c 1538) & wives 7 Anne Hastings and Elizabeth Walden 6 Westmorland (d.1564) and his wives. I have collected more than two hundred images of sculptures of women wearing French hoods. None show anything resembling a stand up crescent. Impracticality This is a less compelling reason than contradicting evidence, but the popular French hood construction is impractical. It is difficult to construct, once constructed, difficult to clean and involves attaching expensive jewelled billiaments to one hood/crescent, so they would not be interchangeable. The elements of the hood, made of expensive fabrics cannot be used with other hoods, styles cannot be altered. 2 Photo by John Hawes - http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnhawes/3208881545/in/pool-65944872@N00/ 3 Photo by Jean “the Church Explorer” - http://www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/2349709066/in/pool-65944872@N00/ 4 Photo by Aiden Thomson - http://www.flickr.com/photos/amthomson/4401601501/in/pool-65944872@N00/ 5 Photo by Roel Renmans - http://www.flickr.com/photos/roelipilami/3962594254/in/photostream/ 6 Photo by Aiden Thomson - http://www.flickr.com/photos/amthomson/2885924006/in/pool-65944872@N00/ 7 Photo by Anothy Cairns - http://www.flickr.com/photos/antonycairns/6036164863/in/pool-1253286@N23 3 In early modern period rich fabrics were used sparingly, garments were worn in multiple layers and components are interchangeable between outfits (eg foreparts, sleeves). The one piece construction of the French hood runs counter to that trend. So what is a French Hood? The easy answer is that it is a multi-layered head-dress , which sits flat on the wearer’s head or is raised slightly by the hair. The “crescent” that we see is an optical illusion created by the multiple layers. The harder questions are: 1. what are the layers? and 2. how are they constructed? I don’t believe there is one “right” way to construct a French hood. A close examination of images suggests that it was worn in many different ways. Furthermore, as one would expect, its form changes over the course of the late 15th and 16th century. Not only are we working with a wide variety of styles and their evolution, there is also limited evidence available. Wide variety of styles There are numerous pieces of contemporary writing describing (and often mocking or condemning) the enormous variety of headdress styles and accoutrements. For example, Phillip Stubbes in his “Anatomy of the Abuses in England” (1583) condemns women’s headdress in a passage which is useful for illustrating both the variety of styles and the richness of fabrics: … on toppe of these stately turrets (I meane their goodly heads wherin is more vanitie than true Philosophie now and than) stand their other capitall ornaments, as french hood, hat, cappe, kercher, and suche like; wheof some be of veluet, some of taffatie, some (but few) of woll, some of this fashion, some of that, and some of this color, some of that, according to the variable fantasies of their serpentine minds. … They have also other ornaments besydes these to furnish foorth their ingenious heads, which the cal (as I remember) cawles, made Netwyse, to the ende, as I thinke, that the clothe of gold, cloth of siluer or els tinsell, (for that is the worst) whewith their heads are covered and attyred withall underneath their cawles maye appeare, and shewe it felse in the brauest maner. Soe that a man that seethe them (there heads glister and shine in such sorte) wold thinke them to have golden heads [and some weare Lattice cappes with three hornes, three corners I should saie, like the forked cappes of Popishe Priestes, with their perriwincles, chitterlynges, and the like apishe toyes of infinite varietie Similarly, Janet Arnold, in Queen Elizabeths Wardrobe Unlocked quotes 1589 letter, extracted at page 205 which also sheds light on the variety of styles: “For the manner of their hoodes at the courte, some weare cripins some weare none. Some weare sattin of all collors with their upper border and some wear none. 4 Some of them weare this daye all these fashions, and the nexte without. So that I fynd nothing more certayne than their uncertaynte” The 1591 play Midas, by John Lyly has another fabulously illuminating passage. One of the characters asks the other to describe the “purtances” (accessories) for women’s heads. The reply: The purtenances, it is impossible to reckon them vp, much lesse to tell the nature of them. Hoods, frontlets, wires, caules, curling-irons, perriwigs, bodkins, fillets, hairlaces, ribbons, roles, knotstrings, glasses, combs, caps, hats, coifes, kerchers, clothes, earerings, borders, crippins, shadowes, spots, and so many other trifles, as both I want the words of arte to name them, time to vtter them, and wit to remember them: these be but a few notes. On the one hand we have to see these pronouncements for what they are – the time honoured tendency of men to denigrate women by critiquing the perceived extravagances in their dress (while leaving the women little other scope for expressing their worth). On the other hand, they illustrate that we cannot assume that the French hood lacked the variety of constructions or styles that is attributed to headwear generally. Limited evidence While there is some evidence from images, statues and documents as to what may have made up a French hood, that evidence only allows us to draw inferences. Previous versions of this paper referred to an extant wire at the Museum of London, which was labelled as belonging to a French hood. I was subsequently informed by Louise Pass via Facebook that the wire is an “ear iron” or oorijzer – worn in Flanders to secure or shape under-caps. Examination of other examples of extant ear irons satisfied me that Louise is correct and this wire is mislabelled. I am very grateful to Louise for her feedback. Extant wire at Museum of London - NOT a French hood wire! With the wire eliminated, there is no known surviving extant French hood or any component of a French hood.
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