Harvest Millinery

 I am part of the British Guild of Historical Costumers channel on Discord, which evolved out of the CoCoVid event this summer. They've proven to be fantastic bad influences and I love them all dearly! Our lovely Admin decided to run a Historical Harvest Hat Challenge.

So, the key parameters are:

• Harvest, autumnal, or halloween themed
• Hat or other object worn on the head (bonnets, hoods, tiaras, and so on are OK, for example)
• Historically inspired or historically accurate

I have currently got a few ideas, so this is a rambling post where I try to put my thoughts together into something coherent enough to actually make... For the sake of my hands and reader's brains, wherever I type "hat" below, please view it as a general term equating to "headwear within the competition parameters". So with that said, here are my thoughts, inspiration, and personal parameters.

Endurability 

Yes, "endurability" is actually a real word.

My first thought was that I need whatever I make to have a life outside of this competition. The object made needs to endure beyond this one event. This is both a financial and an ethical consideration. Financial because it seems incredibly, pointlessly, wasteful to make a hat that I won't use otherwise. I don't currently wear any kind of headwear a lot because I am absent minded and lose things all too easily. 

Ethically, I am also uncomfortable with spending time, money and effort on something that is then going to be either pitched in a bin (think schoolkids' Harvest Festival Crowns) or otherwise sat on a shelf gathering dust. This is different from a financial consideration because it's not about whether I have the money, but on the morality of making such a disposable product. I am gently moving myself towards a more renewable and sustainable lifestyle, and one way in which I am consciously doing that is by trying to choose against Fast Fashion. To me, making a totally disposable challenge entry would be utterly contradictory to that!

Practicality

My only thing I wear on my head with any regularity is a sunhat when walking midsummer, because I prefer to neither burn nor get sunstroke! But, a sunhat wouldn't really fit within the parameters of the challenge, so I scrapped that idea from the get-go.

So what else would be practically useful? A medieval hood would be lovely, but I haven't been actively involved with a re-enactment group in over a decade. That means that a re-enactment ready piece of clothing would also be rather wasteful at present - if I start attending again, I can continue to wear my existing green hood, since I'm unlikely to have grown out of it!

What about non-hatlike headwear? I used to wear headbands a lot, but I don't think I've worn one since the 1990s. I stopped wearing them mostly because while I liked the simplicity of brush, band, go, most purchased bands pinch in painfully on my head, and bunch out higher up. I also wear glasses now, and I suspect that the pinching point on a headband would be pretty close to the pinchy point on my glasses when I've been stuck in telecons for hours (right where the ends of the arms will push in if you're stuck wearing over-ear cups for too long). So no, not doing a headband even if they can be pretty and would be fairly inexpensive to make - I'm fairly sure that I'd never actually wear it again!

Ideas

I've currently got a few ideas:

Mediaeval Hoodie

Thinking on medieval hoods set me on a separate thought chain: I spend a fair bit of time up in soggy Manchester. Which rains, a lot. I have two coats - one warm one without a hood, and one light one with a hood. The light one is good for summer squalls, but is quite old and so I'd be concerned about wearing it in sustained or heavier rain. The warm one is a gorgeous Hellbunny Millie one in teal. It keeps my body dry, but my head gets more than a little damp. I currently wear a hoodie under it when I know I'm likely to need a head covering, but that bulks it out and can make it a little uncomfortable, especially if I want to also wear a warm jumper or cardigan in the office or wherever. In other situations I have a scarf that I can fold to wear over my head, but of course that's not terribly waterproof, but is portable and unlike an umbrella, is unlikely to be accidentally put down and forgotten.

What about a mediaeval-style hood or hoodie that I can wear under my Millie coat to give a hood in the winter when I need it but without spoiling its line or making it uncomfortably bulky? It would need to be waterproof, or at least water resistant, but making it in wool would help with that. If it isn't needed to be historically accurate, I can choose a colour of wool that I just like regardless of modern dyes or social status considerations. I could also embroider it, and even alter the pattern to be more "inspired by" than a copy-of type thing. This would be a practical make that I would use, and also not too financially onerous because while 100% wool is expensive, I wouldn't need a hell of a lot for one hood. Even using pure linen, cotton, or even silk for a lining wouldn't be impossible because of the small scale of the item. I've also seen some pseudo-historical ones (SCA accurate, so plausible but possibly no direct evidence) with embroidery and even shaped dagging. That could bring the autumnal theme in beautifully! 

Historical costume - JA Festival

I could also make a Regency bonnet, which I will need to make/buy at some point for my Regency outfit (see my forthcoming post on outerwear). If I brought forward my headwear plans for the Jane Austen Festival, and also made the decorations autumnal themed, then perhaps that would work? I would need to consider colours more carefully as I don't have the dress fabric yet, and my original rough plan for a Regency bonnet involved covering it with the same fabric as used for the dress. Without the final fabric, I would have to be very careful not to have it accidentally clashing. This is even more of a risk because I want to use that very specific greenish-blue that is shown in the Ginsburg and DAR photos. Finding colours that fit with the theme AND which wouldn't clash with the hypothetical dress fabric will be quite difficult.

Historical costume - other eras

What about other eras? 

I could make a general Victorian era bonnet or cap and then build a costume around it later. That would stop the item being wasted but wouldn't stop it gathering dust for a year or more while I find time and a costume to go with it. I think that this would be a fun project, but probably not for this year...

I could maybe look at a late Victorian or Edwardian hat to go with my 1890s/Edwardian style ahistorical ensemble I should be starting soon. That would be appropriate to a specific costume, and I am already planning to make the skirt in either russet or brown, which would harmonise well. On the other hand, I wasn't planning this outfit as being strictly historical, and therefore wasn't really planning on having an appropriate hat to go with it at all.

Current Plans

Currently my plans are bobbling between three ideas.

1. An embroidered and (ivy) leaf-dagged pseudo-medieval hood to wear either with my Millie coat, or a new one since my lovely Millie is a fair few years old and beginning to show it
2. A simple Regency bonnet with autumnal decorations. Simple would reduce the chances of clashing with my final fabric choices, and I could even add trimmings later (e.g. bias ribbon bows) that tie it more closely to the dress colour.
3. A late Victorian hat that just looks cool

The embroidered hood is a gorgeous idea, and I can see the practical uses for it. Downside is mostly a skill based issue - am I able to do the embroidery I envision. Without the embroidery I don't know if I like this idea as much.

The Regency bonnet is something that I have instructions for, and was planning to make, just not this year. Might be pricey, but it just re-jiggs my existing project plan not replaces it.

A late Victorian hat trimming project would potentially be cheap and simple, and I could maybe repurpose the result into a summer hat.

I shall continue thinking on this and then share my project plan once I have my ideas in place. Of course it's entirely plausible that I'm going to try making more than one of these because Why Not??