Women’s headdresses 1675-1725: top knots, cornets, pinners, etc.

 

Introduction

The head wear for fashionable women at the end of the 17^th century, beginning of the 18^th century, was known for its height. As John (or possibly Mary) Evelyn put it “For Tour on Tour, and Tire on Tire, Like Steeple Bow, or Grantham Spire.” (1) This print (Figure 1) is by Bernard Picart, depending on the museum it is in, it is dated anywhere between 1696 (London Museum) and 1703 (Rijksmuseum). 

Figure 1: Headdresses by Bernard Picart. Rijksmuseum.

 

 

 

The very loose hood had been the main item of headwear for women, it started to take over from the coif in the 1640s, and both continued through to the 1690s. Marcellus Laroon’s Cryes of London, published in 1687, has twenty four of the twenty nine women depicted wearing hoods, often with hat over the top. (2) (Figure 2) These are lower status women. Upper class women at this time are rarely depicted in portraits with any sort of headdress. There is a 1688 mezzotint of Mary of Modena with the infant James Stuart  which shows her wearing a cap with long streamers hanging, which are sometimes referred to as lappets, though that term does not appear to be used until later, There is a reference in the OED from around 1720 to “Four pinners with..eight lappets hanging down behind.” (3)

Figure 2: Detail of Laroon’s Ballad Seller wearing a hood with a hat over the top.

 

The headwear that replaced the hoods and coifs came with a variety of names, though sometimes a headdress was sometimes referred to just as “a head,” as in “Lost a Head with very fine looped lace.” (4 p. 153). In 1679 the Lincoln haberdasher Henry Mitchell stocked a range of headwear for women. As well as coifs, both plain and laced from 1s 6d to 5s, and hoods from 2s 6d to 6s, he also held plain and laced cornets from 6d to 5s 6d, pinners at 10s and “head rowls” at 5s each. (5 pp. 56-63) Randle Holme listed a range of headdresses for women in his work. (6 p. 96)

Head rolls

A head roll was a roll of fabric or fake hair with which to bulk out the hair, or support the headdress, a roll of this type can be seen through the muslin cap on the “Old Pretender” doll in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (Figure 3) Tankard reports on the letters between Judith Morley and her son in 1640/1, when she was having “hair” made for her in London by a Mrs. Pope. (7 p. 142)

Figure 3: Headdress of the Old Pretender doll, seen from the back. Victoria & Albert Museum

 

Top – Knots or Fontange

Top knots, or crown knots, head knots, ear knots, are bunches of ribbons attached to the front of a coif, hood or cap, or just attached to the hair. This is the original Fontange, as Evelyn puts it, “The Top-knot, so call'd from Mademoiselle de Fontange, one of the French King's Mistresses, who first wore it.” (1 p. 18) The effect can be seen in the ballad, The Distressed Mother, c.1690. (Figure 4) There were several ballads at that time which mention top-knots, another example is The Maidens Resolution; / OR, / An ANSVVER to the ADVICE against / TOP-KNOTS, of 1688. (8) Later when the front frill became taller, they could be placed behind the wire commode to help support the frill, as can be seen in the back views of the Lady Clapham doll and the Old Pretender doll, (Figure 3) both in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Figure 4: The Distressed Mother (Printed for P. Brooksby, I. Deacon, I. Blare, I. Back) in John Ashton. A Century of Ballads, London: Elliott Stock, 1887. p.335 and EBBA 20938

 

Cornets and Pinners

The cornet is a cap onto which other items such as the top-knot, lappets or commode, can be attached. Holme described it thus: “A Cornett, or Coif with long Ears, tyed under the Chin, and hanging down deep to the top of the Breast, made of birds Eye or Gaues.”  There is a surviving cap, which may be a cornet or a pinner (the terms seem to be interchangeable) in the Manchester Art Gallery. (Figure 5) Holme describes pinners as, “Some term this sort of long eared Quoif by the name of a Pinner, or Laced Pinner,” so there seems to be little difference as both incorporate “long ears.” (6 p. 96) However, Evelyn distinguishes between the “bonnet” and the pinner, referring to a sorti as “little Knot of small Ribbon, peeping out between the Pinner and Bonnet,” but does not give a definition of a pinner. (1 p. 20) In 1666 Pepys wife bought a pinner without his say so, “I took occasion to fall out with her for her buying a laced handkercher and pinner without my leave.” (9 p. 12th Aug 1666) In 1669 Pepys referred to the Queen as being in “her white pinner and apron, like a woman with child.” (9 p. 19th May 1669) In 1674 James Master purchased for his wife “a cornet all lace £3, [with] a lace't drowle to it 43s.” (10 p. 150) There is no indication of what a drowle might be, as it is lace it is unlikely to be a roll (rowle). By 1699 Elizabeth Miller wrote to Elizabeth Jeakes, “the pinner’s headdresses remain still in the same fashion: there is a discourse of dressing them high and narrow as it was formerly but I have not seen it yet.” (7 p. 154)

Figure 5: Linen cap with streamers or lappets. Manchester Art Gallery. 1680-1700

 

Flandan

A flandan, in Evelyn’s Fop Dictionary, is “a kind of Pinner joyning with the Bonnet.”  (1 p. 18) Looking at Figure 5, if the linen cap with its long linen ears is the cornet or pinner, then the flandan is the lace addition to the front. In the Ladies Dictionary of 1694 the maid says “Will it not be convenient to attack your Flandan first,” to which the lady replies, ”Let me see.. where’s my cornet.” (11 p. 425)

Commode, or tower

Again, there seems to be little clarity in the terminology of the time, but these terms seem to refer to tall headdresses, where the height was supported by wires. Holme writes of, “a kind of Quoife which runneth upon Wires which may be made wider, or else closer, at the wearer pleasure; as made to fit all heads,” but he does not give it a name. Evelyn calls the commode, “A wire frame, covered with silk, on which the whole head attire is adjusted.” (1 pp. 16-7) Judith Hayles, and her daughter Rebecca Thomson, lived in Ipswich at the end of the seventeenth, beginning of the eighteenth century, and appear to have made these headdresses. In Judith’s 1705 probate inventory were, “A parcell of bone lace – head rowle & wyers & forms, lynnen horses & other odd nifles –  £5 9s 10d” (12) These wires can be seen clearly in Figure 3. By 1711 the height of these headdresses had declined, with Addison referring to them thus: “a Lady's Head-dress: Within my own Memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty Degrees. About ten Years ago it shot up to a very great Height, insomuch that the Female Part of our Species were much taller than the Men. (13)

Figure 6: Queen Mary II, by Jan van der Vaar. National Portrait Gallery. NPG D31057

A print of Queen Mary II (died 1694) printed by Visscher II, after a work by Jan van der Vaar, shows her “habitu commode.” (Figure 6) The image shows her wearing a three tier headdress, with long lace streamers, or lappets, and a large number of ribbons, or top knots, behind the tower. 

Bernard Lens

By the time Bernard Lens drew his series The Exact Dress of the Head in 1725-6, the tall headdresses of 1700 had disappeared, though the streamers, or lappets, remained. (Figure 7). 

Figure 7: Bernard Lens, Sheet from The Exact Dress of British Court Ladies. Royal Collection. RCIN 924237

 References

1. Evelyn, John. Mundus muliebris: or, the Ladies dressing-room unlock'd, and her toilette spread. In burlesque. Together with the Fop-Dictionary, compiled for the use of the fair sex. London : Printed for R. Bentley, 1690.

2. Shesgreen, Sean. The Criers and Hawkers of London, engravings and drawings by Marcellus Laroon. Aldershot : Scholar Press, 1990.

3. Oxford English Dictionary. "lappet". OED online. [Online] [Cited: March 24, 2025.] https://www.oed.com/.

4. Cunnington, C. Willett and Cunnington, Phillis. Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century. London : Faber, 1972.

5. Johnston, J. A. Probate inventories of Lincoln citizens 1661-1714. Woodbridge : Boydell, for the Lincoln Record Society, 1991.

6. Holme, Randle. The academy of armory. [Online] 1688. [Cited: July 12, 2024.] https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A44230.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.

7. Tankard, Danae. Clothing in 17th century provincial England. London : Bloomsbury, 2020.

8. McShane, Angela. Top-Knots and Lower Sorts: Popular Print and Promiscuous Consumption in Late 17th Century England. [book auth.] Michael (ed.) Hunter. British Printed Images to 1700. London : Ashgate, 2010.

9. Pepys, Samuel. Diary. [Online] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary.

10. Robertson, S. The expense Book of James Master 1646-1676 [Part 4, 1663-1676], transcribed by Mrs Dallison. Archaeologia Cantiana. 1889, pp. 114-168.

11. H., N. The Ladies Dictionary. London : Printed for John Dunton, 1694.

12. Ehrman, Edwina. The Judith Hayle Samplers. . s.l. : Needleprint, 2007.

13. Addison, J. The Spectator. 1711, 22nd June.