I Tell You, I Must Have It—Medieval Fashion

Abstract

The ideal body for a medieval woman—small breasts, round bellies—differs enormously from today’s standard, yet blonde hair is prized in both eras.¹ However, medieval women’s hair was often hidden under veils, wimples, and more elaborate headdresses. In fact, in the popular view of the Middle Ages, all ladies wear tall, pointed hats fluttering with gauzy fabric. By the time Katherine and Elizabeth Goodwyn were reading The Book of the Knight of the Tower in the late fifteenth century, the atour had come into fashion in England and the most spectacular ones were almost three feet high.² If you examine manuscript paintings of women wearing them, you’ll see they’ve plucked the hair away from their temples and foreheads for a more stylish look. To us, their bald, white, oval foreheads may look like chicken eggs, but egg-like, bald foreheads were the height of fifteenth-century fashion. A little loop of velvet hung from the hat onto your forehead on almost every type of atour, accentuating your baldness.