Costume accuracy question for the Great LJ Oracle(tm)

[love3angle]

This came up on the Ren Faire History Snobs tribe (a wonderful place to be a history snob, BTW).

My friend John, who is quite the history buff, has made an observation that:

"based purely on looking at period portraits. My contention is that the ENGLISH GENTRY and NOBILITY wore exclusively black hats from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign until at

Comments

[love3angle]

I can't believe I missed the Unknown Girl; I've stared at that thing countless times. :-0

[sarahbellem]

Yep, Ms. Unknown leapt imediately to mind. And there's at least a few other instances where I'm fairly certain that I've seen men's caps that were a color other than black (not counting men of the cloth).

Is he counting French Hoods in that statement? Because I'd classify them differently than a "hat", but they still count as a headcovering. So is he talking headcoverings (broader range of possibility to be wrong) or hats (which to me is a thing with a brim that sits on the head)?

[love3angle]

I believe he is specifically talking about "ENGLISH Gentry and Nobility from the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign until at least the mid 1590s"

I've seen several French and Italian men in colored hats, and I've seen several french hoods with the little band of color, right below the upper bilaments.

[jillwheezul]

I'm trying to think if there was anything in my inventories earlier this year. One reason I stopped them is that I want to copy it all to a database so I can find this stuff easy :)

[trystbat]

Depends on what you consider a hat & what you consider a color too.

Like Elizabeth Brydges here -- I see a lot of gold, maybe even a gold front & base with some black on top.

Here's an unknown child with a black patterned cap.

And there's the various versions of Mary Queen of Scots in her white cap. But does that count as a hat? Don't say it doesn't count as English, bec. Hilliard painted one & it looks the same ;-)

Then again, the prevalence of black hats is something I loooove about 16th century bec. I can just use the same ol' hat over & over again.

[love3angle]

The E.Brydges portrait brings up an interesting point in what exactly constitutes a hat. I can find endless portraits of women with "something" on their heads that is almost always gold colored, mostly obscured by hair or jewels, and I can't definitively say that it's a hat, a crown, a veil, a teradactyl...

I wouldn't say that these can be used as proof of colored hats. But that's just me...

[sarahbellem]

Ok, here's what I found on elizabethan-portraits.com

[love3angle]

Oh Oh there's a nice pink one on a MAN in the bottom left corner of the Bermondsey fete! :-)

[sarahbellem]

Perfect!

I get really twichy when people make blanket statements that contain absolutes like "never" or "always", especially about historical costuming. There's exceptions to every rule!

[love3angle]

Well, I know John enough to know that he only strives for better accuracy, and he will not take being proven wrong badly at all. :-)

[gary_kephart]

Of course, there's always the consideration of the difference between what they wore everyday, and what they wore to have their portraits taken.
In early Victorian photos, for example, it was against the social rules to smile in a photo. That certainly did not mean that no one smiled back then.

[love3angle]

That's why the paintings like Bermondsey or Breuegal's etc are so important.