Truth or Dream: The Hennin
Although Medievalism is still very much present in today’s fashion, one thing is true about people living in the Middle Ages: they loved dramatic headpieces much more than we do now. From medieval snoods to crowns, mail coifs, helmets and circlets, the truth is that they paid attention to ornament, particularly to ornamented headpieces, and their designs continue to have presence in current pieces and trends. However, the medieval hennin has probably suffered the most throughout the passage of time.
Petrus Christus - Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1465)
It is not very difficult to confuse reality with fiction when dealing with Medieval fashion: whereas a lot of its elements are beginning to be easily spotted in current trends, it is not as easy to separate them from those elements that have been reimagined in order to meet the Medieval ideal. This is, in fact, how Neo Medievalism is born: a contemporary reaction to medievalism that seeks to reinterpret part of the elements culturally associated with the Middle Ages, regardless of them being historically accurate or not. And, although (Neo) Medieval fashion and aesthetics have found their place mainly amongst High Fantasy videogames and media pieces, the hennin has never had the presence or relevance some of its counterparts have. Despite having been an important part of the fashion of their time, hennins have consistently been perceived and labeled as a “medieval cliché” often associated with outdated works of fantasy, and have stopped appealing to general contemporary sensibilities.
Pierre-Charles Comte - The Secret Rendezvous (c. 19th Century)
But what is, or was, a hennin? This headdress, born in Europe during the Late Middle Ages and particularly popular amongst the noblewomen of the 15th Century, marked the beginning of the victory of height over width in the battle of defining women’s headwear at the time. It was worn tilted backwards so the forehead could be a display; high foreheads were favored by the contemporary beauty canons, and it was not rare for women to pluck some hair from theirs to make it look bigger. The rest of their hair would be tucked inside the piece, which might contrast with the way we might have seen it portrayed in modern media pieces.
Nana Visitor in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) —-–—— Claire Bloom in RICHARD III (1956)
The hennin was usually big, cone-shaped and pointy, but could also have a double-horn shape or a truncated form; whereas the truncated shape was fancied by the English, its pointy version was more popular in France. It could also be draped by a thin veil called the cointoise, that floated behind the wearer and whose length would vary from shoulder to floor-length, depending on how much wealth one wanted to display. It had multiple variants, such as the flowerpot hennin, the butterfly hennin, the escoffion or the high-pointed steeple cone, making it a quite versatile yet impractical piece of clothing.
Givenchy Spring 2010 RTW via Vogue
Nowadays, though, the hennin is mostly perceived as a caricature of its time, and is almost exclusively associated with medieval princesses and fairies. New medieval interpretations, in their process of selecting certain items and re-imagining them in a quasi-fantastical context, have often taken the Medieval aesthetic and turned it into a place where imagination meets pop culture, dragons exist, and elves are the established canon of beauty. This, together with the fact that they would be significantly difficult to wear nowadays, might be why hennins have not been able to resonate with modern designers as much as other contemporary pieces like the snood or the circlet.
This does not mean that hennins have had no modern (re)interpretations. In their case, however, we find that its design has been generally simplified in their contemporary form. Their characteristic conical shape has been used in its most discreet form by fashion houses such as Givenchy or Issey Miyake, and has been less likely to appear on the runway in its large and pointy version.
Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 2019 —————————— Issey Miyake Spring 2011
A couple of examples of its veiled version were seen in the Chanel’s Métiers d’art 2020/21 collection, managing to avoid any fairy-godmother connotations by leaning towards late-Renaissance influences. Less defined inspirations could be found in moments such as the iconic Maison Martin Margiela Spring 2020 Ready-to-Wear, or in the Ann Demeulemeester Spring 2014 and Fall 2017 Ready-to-wear collections. Demeulemeester’s headpieces take the shape of the double-horned hat in its blurriest and most gothic form; this cloudy, less defined version of the hennin’s distinct shape is more reliant on the contoise and less on the structure beneath it, sketching but never defining its shape.
Chanel’s Métiers d’art 2020/21 ph. Juergen Teller via Chanel
Ann Demeulemeester Spring 2014 RTW ——————— Ann Demeulemeester Fall 2017 RTW
On the other hand, Galliano’s Margiela mixes WWII uniforms and Renaissance inspirations; as Sarah Mower puts it for Vogue, “his consciousness of the digital world, social media, and what the Gen-Z interns bring to his studio has sent him into explorations of creative chaos.” This creative chaos is also found in Rick Owens Spring 2020 Ready-to-Wear collection; whereas the headpieces only but resemble the shape of the hennins, a number of models displayed a shaved forehead that might have been a wink to the plucked-out foreheads of our original hennin-wearers. Quite medieval.
Maison Margiela Spring 2020 RTW via Vogue
Hennins might not have survived the war against time, but they have been a very interesting and playful fashion item that only the most curious minds have dared to explore and adapt to modern times. And, although they have mostly been used to cement the fairy-tale quality and mischievous tone of the stories in which they are found, hennins have also been the foundation of a great number of (possibly overlooked) clothing pieces. And certainly, if nothing else, they are proof that not everything in the fashion world has already been overly done.
Paula Luengo is a fashion writer and columnist for Delude Magazine.