Making a Historically Accurate Maleficent Cosplay II- the Hennin

hello everyone and welcome back it's time for part  two of making historically accurate maleficent   where i am going to start tackling her  headgear which is a big project unto itself   so maleficent seems to be set somewhere  around the early part of the 15th century   meaning somewhere likely in the 1420s based off  of her hoop along style the houppelande that   i made in the last video had very long pointed  sleeves lots of dagging and it just fits pretty   well in that first quarter of the 15th century now  there are a lot of headdress options when it comes   to that era and more than one of which actually  looks like horns so somehow maleficent's horns are   actually fairly historically inspired  if almost historically accurate it's   a little surprising to me too but they seem to be  akin to both the double hennin and the escoffion   now the escoffion which we also commonly today  call a butterfly hennin is something that you   find at the late 14th century and into the early  15th century it is shaped akin to butterfly wings   hence the colloquial name today and it very often  has a roll of stuffed fabric that runs along the   top edge there is not one specific shape though it  seems to have a set of wings essentially and these   can be very broad set or very narrow set very tall  or very low they can be large they can be smaller   some almost look closer to just overdone buns in  a way especially when you don't have the role that   goes on top if you start looking at those styles  that are a little smaller a little more like buns   and you start gradually growing those two nodes  and expanding them you start getting closer and   closer to the double hennin that comes in right  around the second quarter of the 15th century   so there is some overlap between those two  the escoffion doesn't just go away overnight   and the double hennin seems to come out  of very similar styles in the same family   what i really like about the double hennin is  that that really resembles horns in my opinion   at least it's very pointed style sometimes they  are very straight sometimes they have a little   bit more of a bulge and roundness to them but it  really resembles the horns that you expect from   maleficent so that is the style that i am choosing  to go with it overlaps with a houppelande on just   a little bit in terms of what time periods they  are commonly found the houppelande lasts well   into the second quarter the 15th century though  the sleeve styles start getting narrower and   less drapey and intensive and gradually it sort  of morphs in some ways into the burgundian gown   of the latter part of the 15th century so  you can find some examples of women wearing   houppelandes with the double hennins and you can  actually find a lot more images where you can find   both just not on the same person so i'm gonna  make a little bit of a reach on this one   i would someday like to make an escoffion but they  really feel like they need to be encrusted with   jewels and gold work and everything i don't feel  like i can downplay make a simple version of this   and i don't really have the time or money to  throw at just covering something in gold so   for today we're going to talk about the double  hennin now obviously it's a double hen that   means there's also a single hennin which is the  style that you tend to see more in that latter   half of the 15th century that is the stereotypical  princess hat of the medieval period which really   only lasted for a few decades so it doesn't  really cover nearly as much of the medieval period   as you would think so the first question that i  had for the double hennin is exactly what shape   did i want to do because even though it seems  fairly straightforward with two points two cones   call it a day it's not they have a variety of  different angles whether they're very outset or   very narrow set whether they are very tall or very  short like i said earlier some are straight cones   some have a more rounded shape in the middle and  that doesn't even take us into the fact that not   all of them are just connected along the center  seam some of them have a sort of flat cap against   the head that runs the whole way through the  middle and then there's two cones which seems a   little bit closer in overall shape and proportions  to what you usually see for the butterfly styles   so i haven't found enough images or done  enough research to say that is the evolution   of the double hennin but there's definitely  some interesting aspects there that i would   like to keep an eye on as i gradually learn more  and add more to my list of research what i chose   to do was to go with the fairly straight style  that's about midway in terms of angle i found   a few examples that i really liked the look of  and the style of and the overall proportions and   angles so i decided to go with that particular  shape this is mostly for my own aesthetic reasons   the next question then once i decided what shape  i wanted to go with was what in the world is   this made out of structurally or on the exterior  very often it appears that they are some sort of   textile that has gold work done on them we  don't have multitudes of examples to look   at to see the variety of textile choices that i  have but i'm going to make a fairly safe guess   that they are likely silk fabrics whether they  are a silk brocade or a plain woven silk like   a silk taffeta maybe a silk velvet just  something expensive and opulent because   these headdresses are not meant for the everyday  person in the everyday situation they are clearly   meant for the wealthy the royalty those that want  to show off so silk makes sense for that area and   the goldwork on top seems to be a whole variety  of different levels of gold work i found ones that   seem to have entire thistles embroidered on them  and others that just simply have lines and pearls   i'm not going to go over the top with this this  time maybe in the future but that's where i'm   headed with my choices i ended up with a ribbed  silk so that way it wasn't too shiny or glossy   it has a little bit of texture to it and it has  a nice matte finish so that was my decision and   then the gold work and all the other parts were  based off of stuff that i just kind of had around   the hard part though for me was figuring out what  the structure needed to be because that requires   a lot of structure especially when you get into  the later 15th century hannin's those things can   get really long and they need something to hold  them together a lot of people who have reproduced   hennins seem to use modern millinery buckram which  makes perfect sense in its heavier stiffer format   it would do very well but obviously it's different  than historically what they would have had for   fabric so i wanted to try and understand what it  is actually likely that they used i found some   people that talked about using a wool felt and  creating a piece that way which i think is really   interesting but i don't think would hold up to  the larger sizes and structures that you can find   so maybe for the smaller styles that makes  sense there are also some that have tried   structural pieces that were essentially woven  baskets or other woven straw again makes sense i'm   obviously not going to a weave some straw nor am  i going to just find that around so that's kind of   out of my options anyway and what i ended up going  with was recommended to me by my friend samantha   who does a lot of 16th and early 17th century  stuff and she's been working on french hoods   and highly recommended the paste buckram that  is sold by tudor tailor which is incredibly   stiff and structured so i ordered some of that i  can't find it in the u.s i looked it seems to be   something that is distinct to the uk in terms of  being used for reupholstery of antiques or antique   styles of draperies as well so it seems to be a  very very useful fabric not only for millinery   but also for structures of curdles and other 16th  century gowns so i'm very excited to get to use   more of it in the future because i loved it it's  really not going to say easy to work with but very   effective i am impressed at how strong this stuff  is so that paste buckram is what i'm using for my   structural integrity because it is so stiff  i found that i don't need to add wire around   the edges i'm not doing crazy shaping to this so  that's all i needed for the actual structure of   the hannin however this brings us to the last  problem that i came across which is how do i get   it to stay on my head these things get really big  especially the single hennins that get really long   how in the world are they keeping those things  on their heads i did see that quite a few of   them have a little tiny v at the forehead which i  thought was very interesting but a little v like   that where it doesn't actually attach to anything  if it just sticks off of the front of the hennin   doesn't really seem to make sense as a helpful  item so i started looking at more and more images   i found a few that showed a layer of fabric in  between the hennin and that little v which to   me meant that perhaps these were not connected  pieces which got me thinking about what could be   underneath of the hennin which in watching one of  samantha's videos talking about 16th century hoods   she wraps a little piece of fabric around her head  before she puts the hood on and that just cued   light bulbs because i realized if we had a little  band of say black velvet that wrapped around the   head first it could be anchored into the braids  or it would just grip to the skin really well that   would be a place where you can anchor through  friction and even pins whatever headdress you   need to go on top because i don't have a lot  of hair i can't braid it up in elaborate ways   that would allow me to really establish a large  item on my head and in reality not all women in   the past did either even if it was the standard  to grow your hair out really long so you could   there are women that are dealing with hair  loss for medical reasons through pregnancy   just because of heredity they're not going to have  the hair for that and there was a fashion with   some women to pluck back your hairline to reduce  the amount of visible hair around on the body and   that topic is not something i'm going to go into  greatly it did happen it does exist we're still   trying to figure out which women did it why they  did it but there are references to it occurring   not surprisingly with the royalty and the upper  classes there is a chapter in a book that i have   linked down below if you want to read a little bit  more on that that seems to have some cited sources   and quotes and that's a great place  to start if you're curious about this   but all that led me to do was realize not all  women had a bunch of hair to anchor into so i   had to be able to do this myself hence why i think  that velvet band is a really good place to start i   also realized that with the black band i actually  came across an image that shows what very likely   is a little black band of fabric that went around  the woman's head very rarely could i find any   imagery of women that had removed their headdress  in any layer or state so this seemed to be the   only image i could come across where clearly it  had been forcibly knocked off of the woman and   the band was on the floor along with the little  truncated hennin and the very stiffened veil that   went over it anything else they just seemed to  leave those on i found images of women continuing   to wear their hennins while taking baths in the  bedroom fencing any which way you can think of it   they just seemed to leave those on no matter what  so clearly they had to be stable in some format i   started thinking well perhaps that little v  is attached to the velvet band but why what   good would that serve and then i came across a few  people talking about how this might be a hairpin   and it just again light bulbs makes perfect sense  if this little pin inserts in through whatever you   need to hold on and goes into the braids that you  have on the top part of your head it can anchor   incredibly well once you have something anchored  at that spot it's not going to go anywhere as long   as the rest is held on by velvet and wool and  friction it's going to be very stable so i have   not yet made a hairpin i'm not sure if i will need  it or not but i'm going to try this headdress on   wobble it about as much as i can to make sure  it stays on and if i need it i'm going to   make one of those hairpins we will see editing  nicole here to say that as i was trying to pull   images for this video i came across a few spanish  and italian images that showed women with little   circlets or ribbons or bands or something on  their heads that were little black bands which   i'd always seen the plain ones that went about the  head sort of horizontally before but some of these   images showed more than one some of which were  sort of shaped into a little point in the front   it doesn't look like these women were supposed  to have additional headwear on top of these bands   but perhaps this is another possibility of what  these little black pieces are they might just   purely be decorative little ribbons or bands that  go underneath that's the joy of research we're   always finding new things and more questions than  answers so that is where i'm at with how i think   these things might have been worn and kept  stable on women's heads this is a lot of   conjecture i fully admit that and if other people  have tried different methods that don't include   modern things i would really love to hear about  your experiences or if you have quotes or other   research i'm also going to try making one of the  veil styles that i regularly found there are some   examples that come in black rather than white  not many and none that were exactly the style   of hennin that i was looking for with the black  fail but because this is a cosplay because there's   a little bit of precedent for it i'm going to make  a reach on that and use a black silk over the top   rather than a white because it just doesn't seem  like it would work with the character otherwise   i also would really at some point love to be able  to manage these little metal cones that fit over   the tips of the hennin because it just really  looks like horns at that point and i think it's a   great way to help keep the sheer veil on over the  hennin i'm not sure if i'm going to find something   that will work for this i might eventually have  to have something made in the long run but that   is something i would like to do eventually in the  future because they just look cool for right now   we're going to work on the black band making  the henna and decorating that finishing it up   and the veil and perhaps any other structural  integrity issues that we need to tackle at the   very end so let's get started with figuring out  the shape of this thing i wasn't at all sure what   shape these cones needed to be so i started  off by measuring from the base of my skull   up as high as i thought it would need to be and  created a 45 degree angle for the cone then i took   that very large piece of cardstock and figured  about how large it needed to be to fit comfortably   around my head i knew this was something that was  going to have to adjust throughout the process   as was the actual height of the overall  cone this seemed like a good place to start   i then marked the center front of my forehead and  the center back of my head as well knowing that i   would need to cut up in those sections in order  to get this to fit down over my head correctly   so those are my starting points where i then drew  curves up and over the center part of the head and   curved up around the area of the ears to that  center front point trimming that off it now   fits much further down on my head not quite far  enough i do want it to cover the top of my ear   not all hennins cover the ears  some do but i preferred that style   i also realize that it is far too tall at this  point but we will deal with that in the future   it seems to be close in shape where i curved  those but i just trimmed them down a little   bit further tried it back on my head to make sure  that it fit a little bit better to where it needed   to be make i really want that back point to be  down at the nape of my neck at the center back   which it's not quite there yet but there are a few  ways we will make our way there so i'm cutting the   openings up a little bit higher again trying it  on one more time making sure that it's centered up   front and back and you can certainly do this with  a pair at the same time if you are less sure of   how this is fitting on you but i wanted to get  a general concept of the shape before i cut out   the second side this is also the point where  i'm tackling the fact that it is way too tall   it seemed like some of the imagery showed them as  just a little bit taller than the actual height of   your face so i'm taking off about two inches in  height for this i decided to do that by way of   opening up the pattern and reducing the cone from  the base knowing that the base fit me correctly i   didn't want to have to mess with moving everything  up and around and changing the overall size of the   base it made it much simpler to just adjust the  cone from the top so now i'm back at trying it   on again it seems like the center line might be a  little too far over meaning that's going to splay   things out a little bit further than i would  like so i'm going to curve up that center line   and again make it so it fits down over my head  a little bit further i'm sometimes opening up   the overall size of the cone and sometimes  just adjusting the height of those curves   i also added a little piece to the back where it  wasn't extending quite far enough over or down in   order to make it around the shape of my head once  i felt pretty confident i went ahead and copied   it off to the other half taped them together  and tried it on i made a few more adjustments   in order to get the points where i wanted them  from there but it was pretty close to correct i then went to cutting it out of the buck room  i realized i need to leave a little bit of   seam allowance in order to have space  for the overlap to occur i don't want   the edges to meet they'll just curl back in  on themselves and i added a little bit to the   center front point so that way it didn't  dip up as much as it did on the sample to close up the cone i'm just  doing a really simple catch stitch   it's very effective and easy to do through this  sort of open weave but very very stiff textile   there's just no easy way to stitch  through this so it's better to treat it   almost like you're doing a cross stitch i also  realized that because the buckram is so rough   i was a little concerned about putting the  silk directly onto it not having some of the   imprint show through so i started off by cutting  out some of the leftover wool broadcloth that i   did not use for my curdle great way to use some of  my larger scraps and wrapped that around to create   a bit of a cushion you could also do this with  different types of batting but this is something   i had at hand and was essentially a scrap i am not  overlapping the edges instead i'm butting them up   against each other and whipping them down so that  way there's not an added ridge of seam allowance   that's something you can do with broadcloth  since it does have a finished cut edge due   to the felting process in the end i was very glad  that i did this not only for the appearance of the   silk but for the fact that it made stitching the  gold work and beads on much much easier because   i really had something heavy to anchor into so i  didn't have to worry about the silk puckering or   moving about as i stitched it was all very  well anchored i decided to do the hennin in two   separate halves rather than connecting the buckram  pieces together at the beginning it seemed like   it was going to be much much easier to deal with  folding over the seam allowances of the textiles   and getting everything finished off nicely on  the interior and just the ease of manipulating it   around in my hands as i'm working on it to do it  in two separate halves and whip them together at   the very end once the wool was seamed up i wrapped  the entire thing in my silk making sure that i   left a little bit of extra seam allowance so that  way i could fold it over at the top of the point   and the fact that this thing is bulked up a  little bit from my pattern so i wanted to make   sure i wasn't going to end up just quarter inch  shy anywhere so definitely give yourself a little   extra seam allowance on whatever your final wrap  of this is the seam just gets folded over and fell   down and around the bottom i just folded up the  edges of both the wool and the silk and whipped   them down to the interior of the buckram trying  to not go through into the silk visibly on the   exterior which is a pretty difficult thing  to do as this buckram does not want to bend   but it seems to be the best way to finish off that  edge and attach the seam allowance down securely grid pattern that looks like diamonds the  complication here though is the fact that   it is a cone so everything needs to get  smaller as it makes its way to the top   i figured the best way to deal with this is to  draw a circle that is perfectly level from the   top point the whole way around and then figure  out how many diamonds i wanted at that point and   radiate out what ended up being six lines that  were equal distance apart along that horizontal   circle and met up near the top point i then set  about starting to couch down my gold threads   and whenever i reached a point where i  crisscrossed i added a little gold bead   on the first half of the hennin that i  did i stitched the gold beads on later and   that seemed to take twice as long so definitely  recommend doing that as you go in this case the final step before connecting was to make  sure that i finished off the interior i thought   about doing a full lining but it seemed  like that would be rather difficult to get   all of that to stay up inside with such a long  point i was worried it might deflate and pull down   or warp and push around doing a partial lining  seemed like it could be a problem considering   you don't know how much hair needs to go up inside  of that section and how it needs to support itself   on the head in other styles of hats very  often you have a little drawstring lining   instead but since this is a two-part headpiece  that just seemed like it was going to get really   complicated really fast therefore i realized it  wasn't necessary all i really needed was a facing   and it was a great opportunity to put in a  little biased strip of the same wool that i   have left over from cutting out my couple on and  this means it's going to have added friction it's   going to grip to my head really well i would  have either used this wool or a velvet which   would again help it really stick to my head and  i admit it worked very well and i'm really glad   that i chose to do this over a cotton or silk  lining that may have meant it slipped around   too easily and would have been rather  difficult to get it fitted correctly from there i was able to seam up the two  pieces i just whipped them together yes the   stitches are visible but i decided to put a gold  braid over the edges and down the center seam   to hide that it also helped the fact that  my diamonds were not perfectly symmetrical   on each cone i did not manage to do that  correctly apparently and so that helped hide it   the next part i needed to tackle was the veil  which is incredibly simple i could find a few   different types of veils they all seem to be  rectangular in shape some of them have a split   in the front that helps them wrap around the two  cones while others are just simply pinned and   folded in order to wrap around the two cones some  seem to be only about shoulder length while others   went all the way down to the hips i chose to go  with the shorter length considering how much else   is going on it didn't seem necessary to have the  longer style and i figured i'd try out the folded   method first and if i didn't like it i could  always split the front later in this case i'm   also sticking with a rectangular shape rather than  curving off the corners which is another style i   saw and i'm leaving it completely plain you could  put trim embroidery ruffles all sorts of different   things on these there are so many different  types of veils that i can find examples of   but i decided to just keep it simple with a  plain black silk organza with the edges hemmed up who is the mistress   of all cuddles?

Channel: Nicole Rudolph

Views: 89,945

Keywords: Nicole Rudolph, fashion history, fashion historian, sleeping beauty, disney villains, disney cosplay, historically accurate disney, middle ages, 15th century, medieval clothing, historical sewing, sewing asmr, making historical clothing, medieval dress sewing, medieval dress tutorial, medieval costumes for women, sleeping beauty maleficent, maleficent costume, maleficent cosplay, medieval hat, medieval headdress, henin

Id: VPu1LOs6Iaw

Length: 29min 47sec (1787 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021