Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Hair

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During the 13th century, noble women parted their hair along the cen-

ter and made two braids at the side. These braids were curled around in the

shape of ram’s horns and pinned with decorative hairpins made of bone or

brass wire. Sometimes the braids were shaped to stand out from the head

with the tip of the braid sticking out like the point of a ram’s horn. The

braids might be wrapped in linen as they curled, or they might be conﬁ ned

in a crespinette (hair net) after they were pinned.

In the 14th century, the two-braid style moved from spirals to thick col-

umns next to the face. The columns could be achieved by wrapping the

braids around the rim of the face so they looked like vertical pillars from the

front. The braids could also be layered vertically, up and down just in front

of the ears, to be like pillars. They were pinned, encased in a crespinette, or

even slipped into a ﬁ llet or crown that helped hold these pillars in place.

The style became more elaborate as the 14th century passed. Women

who did not have enough hair to wear these styles wore hairpieces and ex-

tensions. One hairpiece, excavated in London and dating to the 14th cen-

tury, consisted of a decorative tablet-woven ﬁ llet band around the head

with braids of hair attached by decorative mounts. The braids were in the

There are few pictures of early medieval

women’s hair; most show hair in very

long braids. Often, these braids were

wrapped in ribbons or cloth strips. In

this 12th-century book illustration, an

English Norman woman has hair so

long that it might never have been cut.

Her two braids are closely wrapped in

linen strips so that the hair cannot be

seen. (James Robinson Planche, An

Illustrated Dictionary of Historic

Costume, 2003)

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vertical-pillar style and hung to about the bottom of the ears. Combina-

tions of headdresses and false hair must have frequently contributed to the

increasingly artiﬁ cial look. Mid-century, one style ﬁ tted the ﬁ llet with open

caul cylinders of wire mesh. Either false hair or the lady’s front hair was

drawn into these cylinders, which formed literal pillars next to the face.

There is also some pictorial evidence that wealthy women wore false hair

made of silk. Paintings often show Italian women with blonde hair, which

was very unusual in that region, and some city ordinances passed sumptuary

laws forbidding servants to wear silk false hair. Their hair could also have

been bleached with lemon juice and sunlight, as Renaissance women in Italy

later practiced.

The 15th century was a time of rapidly changing fashions for women’s

heads. Most illustrations show women with elaborate hairstyles that must

have been heavy, hot, and cumbersome. Conversely, some illustrations from

France and Flanders show young women with short, curly hair, held by a

simple cap or ﬁ llet. Italian women’s styles sometimes depict long ponytails,

tied with silk ribbons. In other pictures, they wear a coil of real or false hair

on top like a hat, while the rest of their hair is free. There are even illustra-

tions of court ladies in all regions with loose, long hair only bound by a ﬁ llet.

Court styles in the North during the 15th century used hair to comple-

ment increasingly exotic headdresses. Hair was still braided, and the braids

were pinned close to the head so that only the headdress showed, or they

were curled, layered, and pinned in shapes to ﬁ ll or support the headdress.

Some headdresses were shaped like wings, or hearts, and required the hair

to be pinned up in these shapes. The cone-shaped hennin, on the other

hand, required the hair to be pulled back out of sight, knotted into a bun,

and hidden under the cone.

The 15th-century fashion was to have a high forehead, and some women

plucked their hairlines to make their faces longer. Some illustrations show

such extremes of plucking that the women appear to be bald, capped only

by an expensive headdress. They also plucked their eyebrows to be very thin,

almost invisible. This fashion may have come from Italy, where early 15th-

century illustrations show women with hair very tightly pulled back. In this

hot climate, the heavy headdresses worn in Germany, northern France, and

England were not appealing. The common factor between Italian images

and English ones are the artiﬁ cially high foreheads. In extreme cases, some

Italian women are shown bald nearly to the crown of the head. Their hair,

behind this plucked region, was swept into tight braids or coils or held

tightly by a ﬁ llet or a silk cap.

Men’s Styles

During the Roman Empire, men had routinely shaved their faces and cut

their hair. Until around the year 800, shaving and maintaining short hair

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continued to be the fashion in Constantinople. After that time, the fashion

shifted to long hair and beards.

Monks always shaved their heads. It was an international style that began

with the monks of the fourth century, imitating Egyptian practice, and it

has persisted into modern times. Most European monks shaved the top of

the head, leaving a circle of hair around the forehead and ears. Some Celtic

monks shaved the front of the head, leaving it long in back. In the late Mid-

dle Ages, the one exception to the monastic shaving rule was the monas-

tery on Mount Athos, in Greece, where women were strictly forbidden and

men were ordered to grow beards so women could be quickly spotted. All

other monks were clean shaven with shaved heads.

The typical medieval man’s hair length was between shoulder and ear,

cut to one length, and brushed to curl under. Among the working classes,

hairstyles varied little; hair was kept short enough to be practical but long

enough not to need much cutting. Beards came and went in style. Shaving

was a mark of having time and money, since poor men did not have the means

to shave or visit a barber and had to be out for work at dawn. As a general

rule, young men were clean shaven, although they may have visited a town

barber only once a week. Often, as they grew older, they grew beards as a

mark of gravity and importance.

The Bayeux Tapestry shows Normans with some distinctive hairstyles.

Some ﬁ ghters have their necks shaved partway up the back of the head, and

the remaining short hair is brushed forward toward the face. The Normans

at that time often wore mustaches; they called them guernons. Anglo-Saxon

men in the Bayeux Tapestry are shown with short hair and mustaches but

without beards.

Long hair was fashionable in France in the 12th century; some men

braided strands at the front, which were tied behind to keep the hair in

order. In some periods and places, such as the early 13th century in En-

gland, young aristocratic men parted their hair from ear to ear. The back

hair was combed back, while the front hair formed a short curled fringe.

Such an impractical hairstyle was a mark of wealth. A more practical, uni-

versal haircut for the 13th century was at the shoulders or just above, with

a short fringe of bangs across the forehead. In pictures, knights with this

haircut usually have curls, and some could have used a curling iron to curl

the ends.

The late 14th century, when clothing for men became more foppish, also

brought back facial hair. Beards and mustaches became fashionable at the

court of England’s Richard II. They were carefully trimmed, sometimes

pointed. Hair grew longer, to the shoulders.

The most extreme change in length was a period in the 15th century

when cropped hair was stylish. It looks like what we call a bowl cut—all one

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length, but short and forming a circle around the head. It was brushed to

stand out from the head, but with the ends curled under. Around the same

period, some men shaved the backs of their necks well into the hairline so

no hair showed below their hats. Some images of men in tall 15th-century

hats make them appear bald.

On the other extreme, the 15th century in Italy saw a fashion for curly,

bushy hair for young men. It was not very long, but it may have been

braided at night to turn it curly. Florentine dandies also may have bleached

their hair as the women did. Blond hair was very fashionable and is shown

in some illustrations.

See also: Cosmetics, Hats, Hygiene, Jewelry.

Further Reading

De Courtais, Georgine. Women’s Hats, Headdresses, and Hairstyles. Mineola, NY:

Dover Publications, 2006.

Norris, Herbert. Ancient European Costume and Fashion. Mineola, NY: Dover

Publications, 1999.

Norris, Herbert. Medieval Costume and Fashion. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,

1999.

Scott, Margaret. Medieval Dress and Fashion. London: British Library, 2007.

Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of England

at the close of the medieval period, was

considered one of the most beautiful

women of her time. She followed the

hair fashion of the 15th century by

plucking hair to make her forehead

seem larger. Her hair was always shown

pulled back very tightly, in contrast to

earlier styles that looped and draped

hair around the face. A rich hat that

almost entirely covered her hair

completed the fashionable look.

(iStockphoto)

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Hats

Medieval styles for hats, headdresses, and hair tended to be universal across

Europe. However, styles that began in Italy or France took time to reach

other countries. Travelers brought the styles, and royal marriages generally

brought a different wave of fashion with the new queen and her retinue. In

cold countries like Germany, heavy headdresses that covered the hair well

were more popular. In warm climates, such as in Provence and Italy, uncov-

ered hair and light veils were the norm. At a time when women in the North

were veiled and wimpled, a young Italian woman appears in an illustration

with braids pinned around her head in a simple, timeless style. Northern

France and England, due to a high rate of intermarriage and travel, were

similar, but England’s styles lagged behind France’s by 5 to 10 years.

During the Middle Ages, the rate of fashion change sped up, until, in the

15th century, aristocratic women had to alter their head style every three

or four years, if not more often. Men’s hats of the 14th and 15th centuries

were as attention grabbing and nearly as elaborate as women’s. Common-

ers’ styles did not change rapidly.

In the early Middle Ages, Constantinople and the surrounding cities

of the Byzantine Empire were the originators of all ideas of fashion. Some

cities in Italy were under Byzantine rule until the late Middle Ages. Other

cities in Italy copied the sophisticated Byzantine fashions, and travelers re-

ported them in Northern Europe, where they were eventually imitated.

Byzantine empresses wore a hat based on the turbans of the East. The

cap was close ﬁ tting, and around the brim of the head it was a large roll of

silk padded like an inner tube. It was covered with pearls and gold, and their

hair was hidden under it. Byzantine women other than the empress began

to wear linen caps of the same design—close ﬁ tting and covering only the

top of the head, with the brim rolled. It was a true hat, not a veil or hood.

In time, hats like these were introduced into Europe, and they replaced tra-

ditional veils.

Women’s Styles

In the early Middle Ages, as a rule, all Northern European women wore

some kind of covering on their heads. When there was no other style of hat

available, women wore veils and scarves. These veils could be large or small,

rectangular or circular. They were usually made of light fabric. Wealthy

women wore them with graceful folds and sometimes with jeweled pins

to hold them in place. Although modern use of veils suggests covering the

face, these veils only covered the head.

The Anglo-Saxon head-rail was a lightweight piece of white linen with

a circular opening for the head. It was set on the head, hanging over the

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forehead, and was pinned in place with decorative straight pins. It covered

the lady’s throat and neck but did not come up to her chin. Among royalty,

circlets of gold or embroidery helped hold the veil in place on the head.

When a common woman was working, she wore a longer veil and tied it

around her head or attached it to one shoulder and wrapped it around her

head. When Norman fashions came to England after 1066, head veils be-

came smaller and more open. The couvre-chef covered only the hair and

sides of the face, not the neck as well. Metal or cloth circlets, called ﬁ llets,

became a more common way to hold this veil in place.

In the middle of the 12th century, aristocratic women in Northern Eu-

rope began wearing a band of linen called a barbette. Their hair was braided

and pinned around the head, and the barbette went under the chin and

around the top of the head, where it was pinned. A veil or kerchief covered

the pinned top of the barbette, and a small hat often went on top. The hat

was called a coif, and it was small, round, and ﬂ at on top, perhaps modeled

after the Byzantine ladies’ hat. By the late 13th century, the coif hat had

evolved into a little coronet. It was an open band that could be plain, like

a narrow cloth ﬁ llet, or pleated to look like a white fabric crown. The bar-

bette under the chin could be narrow or wide.

During the 13th century, the barbette and coif were the most common

headgear among middle-class women, but aristocratic women developed a

new style. They began to wear a hair net called a crispine, crespinette, or caul.

It was made of expensive materials such as gold, silver, or silk carefully

made into a bag to contain the hair close to the head. Crespinettes might be

worn with a barbette or even with a coif, as well. Crespinettes made of

coarser material such as ﬂ ax became popular with the middle and lower

classes into the 14th century. They were worn with ﬁ llets over braided and

pinned hair. In France, craftsmen made artiﬁ cial ﬂ owers to decorate ladies’

headdresses.

Another late 12th-century fashion was the wimple. Instead of a barbette

and coif, the lady wore a veil on her head and used another cloth, the wim-

ple, to wrap and cover her neck. The wimple was made of ﬁ ne linen or silk. It

was pinned to the hair behind each ear, and it pulled snug up under the chin

so that no skin showed on the neck. Wimples continued to be worn through

the 13th century. In the early 14th century, hair was sometimes left uncov-

ered, so the wimple became the most important headdress. Hair was often

braided, coiled, and pinned by the ears, and the ends of the wimple were

pinned tucked into the hair coils. Illustrations even show ladies with bare

heads, but with their necks modestly covered with a large white wimple.

By the late 14th century, the pressure of fashion to keep evolving newer,

showier headdresses pushed both the crespinette and the veil into new

forms. Hair at this time was pinned into columns by the face and was some-

times uncovered. The new veil had rufﬂ es thickly surrounding the outline

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of the face. The new crespinette was a fancier turban-like cap made of or-

nate silk. It enclosed all the hair, which was pinned up on the head, and it

was covered with embroidery and jewels.

Veils and wimples continued to be worn by lower-class women and the

elderly long after they were out of fashion with the aristocracy. The wim-

ple’s modesty eventually made it part of a standard nun’s headdress. Veils

and head scarves never lost their function with working women in a town.

They continued to wear them in traditional forms, untouched by fashion.

Their veils looped around the head or were pinned or tied.

The practical hood never lost its use with working women, either. As the

man’s hood evolved into the long-tailed liripipe form in the 14th century, a

type of ladies’ hood, open like a veil, imitated it. Prostitutes were supposed

to wear their hoods inside out or to wear only stripes and bright colors.

Practical woolen hoods were used for outdoor work and for traveling in all

of the late medieval centuries. The fashionable headdresses that evolved for

court were highly impractical and easily damaged.

Ladies’ headdresses of the 15th century were extravagant and complex.

They were shaped by wires and integrated braids and rolls of hair into the

headdress. In the opening of the 15th century, the preferred shape was a

variant of the 14th-century column style. A ﬁ llet and wire mesh supported

the hair in round coils just above the ears; because it featured a network of

wire, the style is often called a reticulated (network) headdress. These ﬁ l-

lets were elaborate, made of golden wire, and the cauls on each side were

also highly decorative. After a few years, the tight round buns turned into

larger cauls that covered the ears and presented the familiar pillar shape

from the front. Between ﬁ llets, coifs, veils, and cauls, the hair was entirely

covered. Another style in the same period, around 1410, created a turban

of silk with extra padding to make its shape smooth and thick around the

top of the head.

The next evolution of the headdress was even more artiﬁ cial. Hair, nets,

starched linen, and wire formed the side cauls into wings that stood out

horizontally from the head. They were straight out in a line with the brows

or shaped like wings or the top lobes of a heart. The summit of this head-

dress was covered with a light veil, often with scalloped edges. At its most

extreme—around 1415—the wings stood out a foot or more on each side,

like the horns on a Texas longhorn steer. Because the headdress was cov-

ered with gold mesh, jewels, and a frilled sheer veil, its effect was impressive

and beautiful, but it was far from natural hair.

Fashion was now changing rapidly. By the 1420s, the cauls had shrunk,

and the horns now formed a heart-shaped headdress called the bourrelet.

Its wire framework stood up from the lady’s head six inches or more on

each side, and a silk veil ﬂ uttered from the tips. The bourrelet grew more

elaborate over the next few decades. It was made with thick rolls of padded

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silk over a wire frame, and the lobes of the heart stood up in graceful loops

a foot above the face. Every variation of past styles was used: gold and silk

netting, silk brocade, jewels, ﬂ owers, cauls to hold hair by the ears, and sheer

veils. Turbans, made of silk and padded to be thick and round, were also

worn by court ladies.

In the middle of the 15th century, at the close of the Middle Ages proper,

illustrations show the headdress that is most famous in medieval caricatures:

the hennin, or cornet. This cone-shaped hat, covered with rich silk bro-

cade, ﬁ rst appeared in France around 1430. It was worn tilted back at an

angle from the head, and it was draped with a light circular veil called a

cointoise. The veil often draped to the forehead and ﬂ oated behind; some-

times it covered the entire hennin and sometimes just the end, pinned with

a jeweled brooch. English hennins were ﬂ attened on top like modern hats,

while French ones were true cones that could be as tall as three feet.

In the late 15th century, the hennin’s veil became more complicated. It

was folded and starched, or supported by silk-wrapped wires, so that part of

it stood up around the cone of the hat in two folds or wings and the rest of it

ﬂ oated behind. It is often called a butterﬂ y headdress. Some forms used many

complicated folds of starched veils that stood up from the wearer’s head a

foot or more. As the Middle Ages ended, the cone of the hennin became

shorter and milder and its veil simpler. Sometimes a band of black velvet cov-

ered the hennin’s front and framed the face, draping to the shoulders.

Italy’s headdress fashions were always different, perhaps due to the

warmer climate. The bulky, padded headdresses of the North did not ﬁ t

into Italy’s culture. When French ladies were wearing heavily padded, large

turbans, Italian ladies are also shown in large, bulbous turbans, but theirs

were probably not padded. They could have been formed on wire or wicker

frames. The bourrelet style was smaller in Italy. The whole headdress cov-

ered less hair and allowed more air to circulate while draping a graceful veil

behind leather-covered horns of hair. Italian ladies of the late 15th century

also wore their hair long, enclosed in a silk sheath like a long braid down

the back and covered on the head by net or silk damask. The hennin and

the butterﬂ y never caught on.

Men’s Styles

Until the 14th century, men’s head coverings were both universal and

conservative. They did not change much for many centuries. There were a

few basic styles of hoods and caps. Once court fashions began to offer op-

tions, the hats of the 14th and 15th centuries became elaborate, expensive,

and rapidly changing.

The standard head covering through most of the medieval period was

the hood. The hood was a simple cloth cap with a pointed top, made in one

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piece, with a short cape that surrounded the neck and covered the shoul-

ders. It was shaped like a cone with an oval cut out for the face. The hood

was an all-purpose covering for all social classes and seasons. Monks nearly

always wore hoods, also called cowls, which formed loose folds of fabric

when not drawn up over the head. Some hoods pulled over the head in one

piece, and others buttoned up the front.

The 12th-century Anglo-Norman laborers in illustrations usually wear

simple Phrygian caps, a universal style: rounded cloth caps that tended to

stand up with a point like modern ski caps. Anglo-Saxon working men may

also have worn simple domed hats made of wool felt with turned-up brims.

By the late 13th century, nearly all men, with the exception of monks,

wore a close-ﬁ tting, rounded cloth cap that tied under the chin. It was called

a coif, and it was worn indoors and outdoors, plain and covered by other

hats. Knights wore them under armor, and kings wore them under crowns.

Men may have worn them to sleep and even to bathe. Coifs were usually

made of linen. All pictures of men wearing coifs depict them as white, never

colored or decorated.

Some kinds of hats were never part of high fashion but can be seen in

illustrations of men at work. Physicians around 1270 wore a small round

skullcap with a beanie point. They had cloaks with hoods that covered the

caps when they were outdoors. Many farm laborers wore straw or felt hats

with brims. A medieval English straw hat looks very similar to such hats in

the 19th century; the crown and brim are practical for shading from the

sun. During the 13th century, Jews were forced to wear special hats to make

them visible. The hats were generally yellow, either pointed or square.

In the late 13th century, the hood went through an evolution that began

with a lengthening of the point. The point became a long tube that hung

down the back; it was called a liripipe. The length of a liripipe varied between

10 inches and several feet. Hoods, worn universally in all ranks of society,

were often made to match the tunic and coat. It was fashionable to wear

all one matching color, perhaps as a way of advertising one’s ability to buy

so much fabric all at once.

Around 1300, someone experimented with turning the hood’s cone

around so that the hole cut for the face was, instead, around the top of the

head. The bottom ﬂ are of the cone, which had formed a shoulder cape, was

now a large rufﬂ e on one side, and the liripipe point drooped out to the

other side. If it were long, it hung down or might even be wound around

like a turban. This style of turning a hood into a hat, with a fresh hatband

around the forehead, allowed the wearer to tuck, ﬂ op, point, and turn the

cloth into different shapes. The liripipe, now coming out of the side of the

hood, could wind around the neck like a mufﬂ er or wrap around a hat.

Cut with a small point and a wide cape, the hood could become a hat that

The chaperon’s versatility must have been one reason for its lasting popularity. By

making its underlying hood in varying sizes, hat makers allowed the wearer to let the

liripipe dangle, wrap it around the crown, lay it across the shoulders, or tuck it into

the back. (The British Library/StockphotoPro)