Every once in a while, things happen, stars align, and I have a look at female headwear again. This time around, it's for a small conference contribution - and as I was browsing images and putting together my thing, I realised once more that this topic is huge, it's extremely difficult, and it would be more than enough material for another phd thesis (which, mind you, I am not planning to do). There are so, so many different kinds of headwear worn by women, and so many open questions. Who wore what when? How do the terms we have from texts relate to what we see on images? Where do the (very few) surviving specimens of headwear come in? How did rules and expectations change over time?
How were the headdresses shaped, and from what materials, and how were they fixed on the head so they'd stay on? There's some that just seem to stay on by sheer magic, and then there's others that look fairly sensible.
Oh, but speaking of sensible. There are a lot of draped cloths around, longer or shorter; there's also the barbe-and-fillet headwear in the 13th and 14th century... but then there are the weird things, too. Like a headdress made from long bands - such as this one:
That's a detail from an altar painting from Vienna. (You can find all the images from this altar at the IMAREAL database, and look at them in fairly good resolution, by the way.) Now I'm tempted to go through my stash of linen bands and start wrapping, actually. It definitely looks some kind of intricate more-or-less-hat, and if the band is of a suitable quality (like silk, or fine linen with embellishments), it would also be a way to show off wealth.
So... anyone around here looking for a dress-related topic for a larger study project? Headwear would definitely be a thing. Just saying.