Your hat's on upside down!

I learned the silliest thing today. On the one hand, I now giggle when I look at a lot of medieval paintings. On the other hand, I am comforted by the knowledge that human nature seems to be timeless.

I was confused by the description in a book I’m reading (one of the Cadfael books by Ellis Peters), wherein the man ties his “hat” (not the word she used) into a loose knot on top of his head. I did a little research into the matter... and I’m still laughing.

In early medieval times, men wore a hood over their heads that extended over their shoulders. Over time the point of the hood lengthened enough to have its own name, but let’s stick with images. I’d say “like Robin Hood,” but you may not have fed on the same illustrations I did, so here (all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, and in many cases, the painter van Eyck):

In about 1300, the fad started of wearing them upside-down. I’m convinced it was teenage boys, and that their moms were yelling the medieval equivalent of “Stop that! It won’t keep your shoulders dry that way!” The backwards baseball caps of their day. Except that it REALLY caught on. First, they just wore them upside-down, with their heads stuck in the face hole of the hood instead of coming up through the cape.

The long ends of the hoods hung down too far, so they started wrapping them around their necks, or wound them like turbans on top of their heads.

Eventually, they tucked the cape on top of their head too, and used the hood end to tie the whole thing up like a loose turban.

 

I can find no evidence that they ever took them off, shook them out, and wore them in the normal fashion because of the weather. Fashion overrules sense.