Equal Parts Regal and Ridiculous: A Tudor Lettice Cap

It's project time! 

I recently got very good news that allows me to begin to make my new home in Aotearoa in earnest. My partner and I recently joined the Society for Creative Anachronism in the Kingdom of Lochac, and I decided that to celebrate my good immigration news, I would invest in a piece of kit for my SCA persona.

The Tudor era of British history (1485-1603) was my first historical love. Historical fiction books like Carolyn Myer's Doomed Queen Anne, and Beware Princess Elizabeth painted a vibrant world for me that I wanted to better understand. All through middle school, I went to the library weekly, always leaving with an armload of historical fiction. I read every single title my school had to offer. (Also! The librarians at my school stored all the historical fiction books in a massive antique steamer trunk, so it always felt like I was coming away with treasure!)

 

I've been yearning for years to replicate the clothing of this time period, but working full-time in the mid-19th century, and the third quarter of the 18th century meant that indulging in 16th century clothes and material culture was a little impractical. The museum field offers pretty poor compensation. I was also intimidated by the richness of 16th century materials and tailoring. As a self-taught costumer, I wanted to build my skills on things I could use for my work, but I never stopped dreaming of my someday-Tudor kit.

 

Someday arrived.

 

However, there are complications. My copies of The Tudor Tailor, The Queen's Servants, The King's Servants, and my hard copy patterns are in the States. I'll have them in hand in the beginning of October, however! And, The Tudor Tailor is releasing the long awaited The Typical Tudor at the end of October after their conference. I'll be up to my eyebrows in Tudor goodness very soon! 

 

So, what to do now? The answer came in the form of of a splendid and silly fur cap. Enter: the lettice cap. 

Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling Hans Holbein the Younger c.1527

We find lettice caps in some portraits of the time, most notably in Hans Holbein the Younger's Portrait of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling. If you're interested in the Tudor era, chances are the version of it you see in your mind's eye is entirely a creation of Hans Holbein. His ability to render such realistic looking people is unmatched by other artists of his time. You can find a handful of renderings of the lettice cap on Wikimedia commons.

 

But you also might find a reference in a good ol' classic: A Knight's Tale (2001). This movie is an absolute romp. While not historically accurate, I get the impression that a lot of the tone and energy of medieval tournaments is spot on. If you've never seen it, it's worth a watch even though it's not Tudor. 

 

The character Jocelyn is seen wearing an interpretation of the lettice cap, at least in structure. Hers appears to be a felted wool, rather than the fur rendered in the Holbein portraits.

To my knowledge, Jocelyn wearing a lettice cap is not accurate for the 14th century in which the movie is set. And a lot of the costuming choices for her character are... very 2001. But I love this movie and I love at least that the main female character is at least wearing something on her head more often than not. Check out this more thorough analysis of A Knight's Tale clothing interpretation here at nationalclothing.org

you can just feeeeeeeeel the residual Y2K energy just radiating out from this shot 

 Anyway, back to the 16th century, my project, and the fabulous lettice cap kit offered by The Tudor Tailor!

The Lettice Cap Kit in all its boxed glory.

One skill I definitely do not have is patterning. I really struggle with looking at a 3D garment and being able to intuit how to render it into 2D pieces. Fortunately, there are incredible makers and historians who ARE gifted in this way. And Jane Malcom-Davies and Ninya Mikhalia are two of my personal heroes in this regard. 

 

A reveal of the materials, pattern, and instructions. TT patterns run a little scant on the instructions side, so I wouldn't necessarily say they're for absolute beginners. But if you read carefully, go slowly, and are willing to unpick and redo your work if you err, you'll be fine!

The kit came with a sumptuous realistic faux fur, cotton wadding, cotton flannel, wire, and cotton twill tape- in other words, everything you need for a great reproduction. I'll say the cotton stuff is anarchonistic and the originals were likely padded and lined in linen, wool, or silk. But using cotton makes this accessible and relatively inexpensive. (I got mine for roughly $65USD).

Time to make a mockup! I used several scraps of a mid-to-heavy weight wool broadcloth left over from making my partner a Skjoldehamn hood.  have a larger-than-average head (22.5-23"), so I wanted to be sure the cap would fit my proportions. I traced off my pattern onto baking parchment so I could keep the proper pattern intact. I'm not showing pictures of the entire pattern laid out to protect the Tudor Tailor's intellectual property.

Seam allowance wasn't included, but this allowed me to enlarge each piece a little bit by making mine a bit bigger. By doing so, I was able to adjust the pattern to fit my body!

 

I then assembled the right and left halves of the cap with pins and machine stitched each strip together, then assembled the larger pieces, then sewed the two halves together.

 

Look at the structure the stitching gives this scrap wool! I assume the angles will be softened a bit by the bulk of the faux fur, but this helped me understand the actual shape of the lettice cap.

With only those marginal enlargements of my seam allowance, I was able to make the cap just a bit bigger to fit my proportions.

Now, the nightmare of cutting faux fur. This stuff is gorgeous, but I'll only ever cut faux fur outside in the future. I am STILL finding strands of white fur everywhere that have nothing to do with my kitten.

 

I found it INCREDIBLY important to label each piece, the grain line, and the front edges. I machined the pieces together with a narrow zigzag stitch because I am out of my depth with working with fur (faux or real). I want to get better, and my eventual goal is more authentic experimental archaeology, but I figured it was okay to use a machine this time.  

 

You can get a sense of the individual "pelts" making up this cap. Making up the cap in all these little pieces both gives it structure, and perhaps (I haven't looked into this!) emulates the size of fur being worked with.

 

 

I forgot to take pictures of the cotton wadding, and this was where I had to do a LOT of troubleshooting. You can see in this picture how one front edge is a full inch shorter than the other! I puzzled over it and thought about putting this cap into time-out. But I am trying to get better about working through projects start to finish and not building a UFO backlog like I had in the States. 

 I unpicked the wadding layer, and got my tape measure. The outer fur cap was symmetrical (maybe off by 1/4"). However, the wired wadding layer was wrong. I discovered that when I had gone to overlap and enclose the wire ends, I had overdone it on one side, which shortened one edge by an entire inch! With some coaxing, I managed to true the front edges.  I then trimmed down all the seam allowances, and anchored each of the points of the cap through the layers. I then made up the lining layer, pressed it, set it in the cap, and anchored the points through all the layers once more. 

 

Et, voilà!  Equal parts silly and splendid, regal and ridiculous.  I. Love. Historical. Fashion.

This was a fun project and I am so happy to add a strange yet iconic piece to my historical wardrobe. Sometimes we get so focused on the gowns and body garments that we forget the headwear and accessories. I'm looking forward to building more of my Tudor kit, so that I can get more appropriate photos of my lettice cap!
On to the next thing!