English Costume

by Dion Clayton Calthrop

Now, the roundlet is one of those things which delight the clothes-hunter or the costume expert. It is the natural result of a long series of fashions for the head, and its pedigree is free from any impediment or hindrance; it is the great-grandson of the hood, which is derived from a fold in a cloak, which is the beginning of all things.

I am about to run the risk of displeasure in repeating to some extent what I have already written about the chaperon, the hood, and the other ancestors and descendants of the roundlet.

A fashion is born, not made. Necessity is the mother of Art, and Art is the father of Invention. A man must cover his head, and if he has a cloak, it is an easy thing in rain or sunshine to pull the folds of the cloak over his head. An ingenious fellow in the East has an idea: he takes his 8 feet—or more—of material; he folds it in half, and at about a foot and a half, or some such convenient length, he puts several neat and strong stitches joining one point of the folded material. When he wraps this garment about him, leaving the sewn point in the centre of his neck at the back, he finds that he has directed the folds of his coat in such a manner as to form a hood, which he may place on or off his head more conveniently than the plain unsewn length of stuff. The morning sun rises on the sands of Sahara and lights upon the first burnoose. By a simple process in tailoring, some man, who did not care that the peak of his hood should be attached to his cloak, cut his cloth so that the cloak had a hood, the peak of which was separate and so looser, and yet more easy to pull on or off. Now comes a man who was taken by the shape of the hood, but did not require to wear a cloak, so he cut his cloth in such a way that he had a hood and shoulder-cape only. From this to the man who closed the front of the hood from the neck to the edge of the cape is but a quick and quiet step. By now necessity was satisfied and had given birth to art. Man, having admired his face in the still waters of a pool, seeing how the oval framed in the hood vastly became him, sought to tickle his vanity and win the approbation of the other sex, so, taking some shears, cut the edge of his cape in scallops and leaves. A more dandified fellow, distressed at the success of his brother’s plumage, caused the peak of his hood to be made long.

A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY VI. (1422-1461)

His hair is cropped over his ears and has a thick fringe on his forehead. Upon the ground is his roundlet, a hat derived from the twisted chaperon of Richard II.’s day. This hat is worn to-day, in miniature, on the shoulder of the Garter robes.

Need one say more? The long peak grew and grew into the preposterous liripipe which hung down the back from the head to the feet. The dandy spirit of another age, seeing that the liripipe can grow no more, and that the shape of the hood is common and not in the true dandiacal spirit, whips off his hood, and, placing the top of his head where his face was, he twists the liripipe about his head, imprisons part of the cape, and, after a fixing twist, slips the liripipe through part of its twined self and lets the end hang down on one side of his face, while the jagged end of the hood rises or falls like a cockscomb on the other. Cockscomb! there’s food for discussion in that—fops, beaux, dandies, coxcombs—surely.

I shall not go into the matter of the hood with two peaks, which was not, I take it, a true child of fashion in the direct line, but a mere cousin—a junior branch at that.

As to the dates on this family tree, the vague, mysterious beginnings B.C.—goodness knows when—in a general way the Fall, the Flood, and the First Crusade, until the time of the First Edward; the end of the thirteenth century, when the liripipe budded, the time of the Second Edward; the first third of the fourteenth century, when the liripipe was in full flower, the time of the Third Edward; the middle of the fourteenth century, when the liripipe as a liripipe was dying, the time of the Second Richard; the end of the century, when the chaperon became the twisted cockscomb turban. Then, after that, until the twenty-second year of the fifteenth century, when the roundlet was born—those are the dates.