Tudor French Hoods || Researching and Making a More Accurate French Hood

well friends the time has finally come this is the french hood video [Music] i've been nervous well really intimidated to actually do this video even though i really wanted to especially since there was such a wonderful response to my gable hood video and so many of you were asking for and excited about this follow-up well i've worked through some theories and made some prototypes and i feel ready to finally share what i've come up with however i want to stress very very heavily that this is all experimentation in many ways trying to recreate historical clothing is a lot like following the scientific method where you ask questions do research propose a hypothesis test your hypothesis and repeat until you're ready to draw conclusions and share them i am in no way saying that this is 100 the way that french hoods were made during the tudor period frankly having stared at the images and read primary sources and the available scholarship i'm fairly convinced we may never know exactly how french hoods were made and that's okay what's important is that we keep experimenting keep researching and keep making i genuinely hope that this video will be a springboard for more people to experiment and make discoveries before we jump in i want to set up a few parameters for my exploration of tudor french hoods my work for this video focused on french hoods for the first four decades of the 16th century i feel there's enough of a stylistic change in french hoods particularly concerning the hood portion that i want to save the 1550s and after for a future video so in this video we'll be focusing on the quintessential french hoods worn during the reign of henry viii and the various tutors who followed him however briefly secondly i did not make a physical example of every possible theory i have there are just too many options and i never would have finished this video if i tried to make an example of all of them i will explain the other options however and maybe one of those options will speak to you and you'll want to give it a try i would love to see what you come up with again there is no one right way to make a french hood at this point although there are definitely ways that are less right many movies and mini-series about anne boleyn or other tudor figures have gone for the visor headband with a veil interpretation or fabric tiaras that stand up straight from the head which is frankly just wrong when you look at period portraits you quickly see that french hoods were not headbands with the woman's hair hanging down loose behind so if that's what a french hood isn't what is a french hood based on period images written primary sources and scholarly articles by other dress historians my current hypothesis is that the french hood is a headdress made up of multiple parts worn together with different variations but primarily consisting of a cap which in images is usually white red or black and the black hood these pieces may have gold or pearl or jewel embellishments on them and there's often a crimped gold frill along the front edge of the cap the portion of the french hood that is often interpreted as a separate stiffened crescent is more likely the front edge of the hood folded back to reveal the hood's lining which like the cap is usually white red or black now when i first read about this theory of the folded back hood in karen margretta hoskelson's article in medieval clothing and textiles i was absolutely shocked for so so long we've been interpreting this stiffened crescent in french hoods as a separate piece and making them that way but once i saw the folded back hood i couldn't unsee it it becomes even more obvious when you go back to the beginning of the 16th century and look at early french hoods in these images it's absolutely clear that the front edge of the hood is folded back to reveal the lining creating a crescent-like sliver of contrasting fabric this fold evolves throughout the ensuing decades and becomes wider and more sophisticated if you will being arranged more smoothly over the cap underneath until it becomes harder and harder to detect that it's folded i'll admit it can be hard to wrap your head around this interpretation especially when looking at some 50 and 40s portraits where the crescent just looks so smooth that you think it has to be a separate piece while of course it is possible that the folded back lining evolves into a separate piece i'm pretty doubtful of that right now and i still stand by the folded back hood as what you see in those images they're just folded very carefully and smoothly i think i was able to achieve this with my 1540s hood prototype but we'll get to that in a little bit there are also a couple images from the first half of the 16th century that very clearly show the hood folded back to reveal the lining this image of queen isabella of austria in particular very explicitly shows the hood folded back with no real attempt to make it lay down smoothly and we have a very rare 3d depiction of a french hood in the form of this statue of antoinette defontet from the late 1550s or 1560s while just past the end of the date range i'm focusing on it provides a wonderfully clear image of the folded back hood and we can see the actual folds in the fabric rendered in three dimensions another thing that these images show us is that the french hood is not angled up off the head or standing straight up it's pretty much laying flat on top of the head i think all of the front and slightly side angled portraits by holbein are using a sort of off perspective that show more of the french hood in such a way that it makes the hood look like it's angled up but pretty much every profile image of a woman in a french hood shows the hood is flat or only very slightly raised this is a huge departure from how we've been making french hoods for decades i was able to test these theories by making two french hood prototypes based on the fashionable styles of french hoods one from the 1520s and 30s and another from the 1540s let's start by taking a look at the earlier style and then we'll see how it evolves in the 1540s since these are french hoods after all some of the best images in my opinion of the 15 20s and 30s style french hood come from french portraits after all this is the style of hood that anne bolen would have been wearing when she came back to england from france in 1522. french images show a very tightly fitting cap that in some cases is clearly held under the chin with a white chin strap which will continue to be used in the 40s and 50s the cap is sometimes decorated with pearls or gold or jewels along the front edge and there's often a crimped gold frill along the front edge as well this crimped gold frill is possibly what's called a crepin or crest bean in period sources some dress historians speculate that the crepin was attached to a linen coif worn under the outer visible cap with the crepin sticking out from beneath the outer cap of course this is one possible option but i chose to interpret the crepin as being attached to the outer visible cap when looking at images the crepin follows the edge of the cap so exactly that it just made more sense to me to be attached to the cap the cap already has some gold and pearls attached to it so it also made sense to have the gold crepin attached as well this image seems to show a white linen coif under the crepin which is slightly sheer suggesting that the crepin is part of the red cap worn on top of the linen coif but as i mentioned earlier this is just my interpretation and i'm happy with the results but it certainly isn't the only possibility my attempt at a crepin is made from a silk and metal organza from puresilks.com i pleated it by hand with a series of even gathering threads but you could also use a smocking pleater which would probably be a lot easier i've also seen the suggestion to use a crimping iron and i'm very intrigued by this option but pleating by hand allowed me to control the depth of the pleats for the shape of the cap i chose to make a single piece cap that is somewhat informed by kois from the late 16th and early 17th centuries i know that seems like a little bit of a stretch time-wise but there are so few caps and coits that survive from the early 16th century this koif is dated to the early 16th century by the met although i'm a little bit skeptical of that dating the construction is actually incredibly similar to the late 16th and early 17th century coice with a drawstring casing at the bottom edge gathering at the crown and a seam along the top of the head although in this coif the seam is covered by a bunch of embroidery and lace however the cap for the french hood couldn't have a seam at the top of the head because there are no visible seams in any of the images i found a few images of plain linen coifs that likewise didn't show a seam at the top of the head and they looked to be about the shape that would work for the cap so i came up with a pattern that has a fold at the top of the head gathers at the crown and a seam at the back of the head there's a drawstring casing along the bottom edge of the cap that opens on either side a few inches before the ends of the cap so that the corners can be held tight under the jaw with the strap the strap is a piece of plain white tape it's stitched to one end of the cap and pinned to the other now i'm not squeamish about pins and neither were women of the past but you could also try using a hook and eye here that just felt too bulky to me so a pin seemed like a period and practical solution as to what this cap is called during the tudor period i don't really have an answer for that right now based on english or french period sources and neither did the authors of the articles i read dr peron westerhof-neyman's research into scottish records from the 1510s suggests that the scottish may have called it a chaffron the hood bears a striking resemblance to hoods worn by men and women in the previous century it's cut in one piece with a fold along the top of the head the veil portion extends off the back of the head like a lyra pipe hood black velvet appears to be the material of choice for french hoods it's entirely possible that there were other materials used but images and written sources overwhelmingly support black velvet i lined the hood with white silk satin but red or black are other choices supported by images the hood is embellished with gold beads along the front edge this embellishment as well as the embellishment along the front edge of the cap may have been known as bilamins or hab elements during the period in her article on french hoods for medieval dress and textiles melanie schussler bond references descriptions of bilamins such as quote an ability of goldsmith's work end quote and quote a rich bilament of stones and great pearl on her hood end quote however to make things even more confusing there are numerous references to bilamins made of fabric with either the golden jewels applied to them or no gold and jewels mentioned at all i'm going to revisit this idea when we talk about the 1540s hood prototype but filament seems to be one of those things that may have had more than one meaning during the period to wear the 15 20s and 30s hood i first have my hair taped around my head this was a pretty standard way of dressing the hair in the 16th century and provides a firm foundation for the various headdresses worn over it i'll link down below in the description to some great hair taping tutorials over this i could wear a plain linen koif to help keep the silk cap free of oils and dirt from my hair but for now i'm foregoing that layer next i put on the red silk satin cap pinning the strap in place and tying the drawstrings around my hair over all this goes the hood part of the front of the hood gets folded back to reveal the lining but remember that we also need to see the gold bilamins on the front edge of the hood so a bit of the edge gets folded forward this sort of z-shaped fold allows for the showing of the lining and bilamins at the same time everything is held in place with a few strategically placed straight pins and there we have my interpretation of a 1520s and 1530s french hood i am very happy with how it looks compared to period images and it feels really comfortable and secure on my head by the 1540s the french hood had evolved slightly in style the corners of the cap move from the edge of the jaw and begin to curl upwards toward the cheekbones because of this distinct curve it seems that the cap develops a new element a stiffened and or wired front brim possibly called the paste or orient some sort of stiffening is necessary to maintain the shape of the curve at the cheekbone such as wire or paste buckram a linen fabric treated with glue or paste to make it stiff in fact the use of paste buckram is likely where the term paste comes from to refer to this object while it is possible to make a one-piece cap with stiffening inside and not have a separate brim i found it easier to construct it as a separate piece that is then pinned or stitched to the cap plus this interpretation seems to be supported by references to hood pace and orients in period documents aurea is translated in a 1611 french to english dictionary as a piece that covers the ears which this certainly does even more telling are references in a series of letters to both a paste and an orient which seem to indicate that the terms refer to the same type of object as documented in melanie schussler-bond's article in the first letter mary bassett begs her mother for quote some little pearls to put on her orients as her sister's half end quote and a couple years later her sister anne complains that quote the six score pearls which she hath received be all rags and too few to serve for a paste end quote this seems to describe the embellishment along the front edge of the cap that is possibly referred to as bilamins this part of hood construction was the one i struggled with the most because it was hard to just give myself permission to choose a logical interpretation and make an example i decided to try making a paste or orient and a cap that could then be pinned or stitched together and this is the method that karen margretta hoskelson suggests in her article again another option would be to try making this as one piece and it's something i may come back to in the future but this interpretation worked really well the paste is cut from paste buckram from the tudor tailor i stitched wire to the edges to help the ends of the paste curve into the cheek because the paste buckram is so coarse i added a layer of thin cotton batting on top now i know this is obviously not a period material but it's what i had on hand at the time a soft thin wool would probably be a more period choice then the paste is covered with red silk satin i had to go through a few different versions of the paste to get the right shape at first i put too much curve into the paste which makes it almost impossible for the folded edge of the hood to lay smoothly over the paste because the folded edge is straight i then reduced the curve in the next version but it ended up too short once i added the crepe into it and my earlobes were peeking out it turns out the crepin adds a decent enough amount of thickness that i needed to add about a half inch on either end of the paste so my final version corrected these issues and i was able to reshape the cheek tabs to be more similar to what i was seeing in images the cap is patterned just like the earlier version but smaller to take into account the addition of the paste i chose to pin these pieces together but you could also stitch them together there is a strap under the chin to help hold the cap in place as on the earlier version but i found it stayed very secure against my cheeks even without it because of the wire for the 1540s version of the hood i didn't really make any changes to the shape of the earlier hood there is a change coming to the shape and construction of the hood that will be evident in the 1550s and 1560s where the hood is no longer cut in a single piece but actually two or three pieces then put together i did want to try something different with the bilamins for this hood though in both of their articles melanie schussler bond and karen margretta hoskelson suggest that the bilaments could be attached to a separate piece based on references to bilamins made of fabric and adorned with gold pearls or jewels i cut a strip of paste buckram and covered it with velvet to match the hood then sewed large gold beads to it i'm kind of ridiculously pleased by how well the beads match the filaments in this portrait the bilament can then be pinned or basted to the front edge of the hood and easily changed out for a different look hoods of the 1540s show a larger section of the lining than earlier versions in some cases it appears that the cap and lining are of the same color or even the same fabric making them look like one piece for example this portrait actually has both a white cap and a white lining you have to zoom in and look really carefully but you can still see the fold of the lining it takes a bit more time and care to arrange the hood over the cap for this style but i think the end result is pretty darn close to what we see in images [Music] making the hood prototypes and even making this video was a huge exercise in embracing the unknown and learning to say out loud i don't know everything but here's my current theory based on research and experimentation i may learn new things in the future that prove my theories wrong and reveal a better and more accurate way of doing things in fact i hope that's what happens and i think that's crucial to continuing the study of historic clothing we can only do our best with the information and skills we have at any given moment instead of being held back by a desire for perfection we need to remain open to new ideas and new research and really embrace not knowing everything right away i hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into something that is so iconic to tutor fashion but that i also think we've taken for granted for a very long time i hope this will inspire you to dig into the research and do your own experiments since i created all of these patterns myself please let me know down in the comments if you'd be interested in me offering them as downloadable patterns for a small fee and i'll see what i can do thank you for joining me and i look forward to seeing you next time

Channel: Samantha Bullat

Views: 43,245

Keywords: tudor dress, tudor clothing, tudor fashion, tudor costume, anne boleyn, anne boleyn costume, french hood, tudor french hood, french hood tutorial, french hood pattern, tudor history, historical clothing, how to make a french hood, renaissance costume, couture courtesan, fashion history, renaissance fashion, renaissance faire, henry viii, historical costuming, costube, historical costume, tudor

Id: 5Cv7A8KJJuo

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021