Medieval Headwear
Medieval Headwear
Medieval headwear is a broad term for a variety of garments used to cover the head, such as a coif, a hat, or a chapel. This also includes larger garments that cover not only the head but also the neck, shoulders, and/or torso, such as a gugel. Primarily, headwear in the Middle Ages served for protection, but higher social classes such as the nobility also used medieval headwear as a fashion accessory, as evidenced by many adorned berets, coifs, gugels, hairnets, caps, hats, chaplets, or veils in paintings and tapestries. Increasingly, medieval headwear was also used as a sign to identify guilds and groups.
What medieval headwear did men and women wear?
During the time of the Franks in the Early Middle Ages, headwear is rarely mentioned. Women wore a hood or coif when going to church. In the Middle Ages, both men and women usually wore a cap, headscarf, coif, or a gugel, made of fabrics such as wool, linen, or flax, depending on their daily work and their own purse. From the lower nobility onwards, more elaborate and expensive headwear, for example made of silk, was added, often serving only fashion and rarely being truly functional, like gugels whose points hung down to the floor.
