Headgear

[nineveh_uk]

One of the many things I am enjoying about the BBC’s current adaptation of Wolf Hall is the proliferation of hats, caps, and headdresses for women, men, and children*. Finally! A costume drama in which people are not all waltzing around with their hair loose over the place.

I am particularly in mind of this today because I had my hair cut this morning, and as a rather cold-blooded person find myself as a result more than usually chilly despite the cashmere jumper, wool cardigan, and central heating**. So in the course of bemoaning that in days of yore I could have put a cap on, I realised that there was nothing actually stopping me tying a silk scarf round my head. So I did. I look as if I were promoting industrialization in the former USSR, but at least I am a bit warmer. Sadly, I don’t think that this is an option at work unless I want to look as if I have joined a religious cult. It is tragic in that frankly I look rather good in a cap/scarf/wimple and have no chance to wear one in public, whereas I do not look great in hats. I can put hope that 2016 brings a sudden fashion craze.

*One notes that Benjamin Hill’s wonderful Duke of Norfolk, a man who would undoubtedly consider himself none of the above, is bare-headed a good deal more than the average.

**The latter would be more effective if there weren’t a giant hole in the sitting room ceiling caused by the stairs running up there. If I owned the place I would glaze the stairwell within the first week. I would also put a better radiator in the kitchen.

Comments

[ankaret]

I will totally start a wimple craze with you. white_hart knitted me a snood a couple of years ago and I wear it all the time - I have various others bought from etsy, but that one is my favourite.

[antisoppist]

We could just start a cult/commune.

I have been wearing the tam-o-shanter I knitted for Daughter before she decided secondary school wasn't the place for it but it doesn't suit me and I have agonies working out what the top floppy bit is supposed to do. I like hats with brims but they do not fulfil the necessary function of keeping your ears warm. In Scandinavia I wore shawls - loose over head, warm round neck and crossed over chest under coat for extra body warmth - but I agree they have too much little old lady/religious cult/posh horsey person about them for 21st century rural England.

[nineveh_uk]

I can't do tam-o-shanters, either, or berets, though I do have a sort of woven cloth version that works. In summer I go for narrow brims. Perhaps the UK simply isn't cold enough for shawls to be a continuing mainstream option, but it is most dispiriting. I wish to look neither like a member of an anabaptist commune, Princess Anne, nor 93.

[antisoppist]

I wish to look neither like a member of an anabaptist commune, Princess Anne, nor 93.
:-))

Round here there is a sort of yummy mummy hunter wellies, waxed jacket and peaked cap thing going on but I do not want to be that either.

I am also slightly insulted that Small Daughter seized on my summer straw hat as the perfect thing for Dress Up As A Scarecrow day.

[ankaret]

Oh, God, them. Why would any woman want to cosplay as Captain Mark Philips circa 1989?

[antisoppist]

Far be it from me to judge...

[nineveh_uk]

Fifty Shades of Green tweed?

[white_hart]

Oh, that's a lovely thing to read!

[ankaret]

It is an extremely lovely snood!

[nineveh_uk]

We will begin the March of the Wimples! The world won't know what hit it. I suspect that I would look quite good in a snood, except that I haven't got any hair to put in one.

[ankaret]

That's the joy of snoods. As long as there's something to weight it at the bottom you can't tell.

[nineveh_uk]

Even if the hair in question is max 3" long, rather less at the nape?