What Is: a Hennin

The quintessential accessory of many storybook princesses is a tall, conical hat, often swath with veiling.  A similar conical hat often serves to identify witches, as well.  These hats were called hennins, after an old French word for a cock or rooster and were popular throughout the late Medieval era.

Anne of Bohemia, the first wife of Richard II is often credited with introducing the basic style of the hennin into England.  Bohemia at the time was one of the focal points of European culture, so it's likely this headdress, which was popular throughout Europe, would have been brought to England by a fashionable foreign princess.  In the years after Anne, the hennin went through several changes.  The cone went higher and higher.  Sometimes the tip of the cone was bent.  One cone morphed into two cones.  Hennins could also be short, giving the appearance of an up-ended flowerpot on the back of a woman's head, or the two-cone variety took the shape of two knobs on the either side of the head.  The veils remained, sometimes brushing over the face.  some hennins were decorated with jewels.  A woman's hair was usually tightly pulled back under the cone, with the hairline being plucked back to give a fashionable appearance.  In later years, the hair was braided into elaborate knots under the shorter one and two-cone varieties, bound with netting, again threaded with gold, silver or dotted with jewels.  Both Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Wydeville were pictured wearing these shorter, more elaborate forms of the hennin.  Like all styles, the hennin had its day and eventually faded into the English gable hood of Elizabeth York.