Henneth Annûn Story Archive

Other end, though, this time. Hats- sunhats in particular. I'm taking it on the presumtion that it didn't 'do' for a lady of status in, how can I describe it, human-domminated ME to get sunburned, freckled or tanned (not simply because the two dominant queens of the early 4th age had varying degrees of Elven blood and therefore would remain milky more or less permenantly- more because the majority of the lower orders would still be labouring in the fields, exposed to the sun all day, and it's always been a badge of status to be what the 'ordinary' people are not). Does the sort of period we're looking at accomadate some sort of hat or sunshade that a lady of the upper crust might wear to avoid this?

Thanks!

 

Tolkien didn't go into details about people's clothes, generally, and hats have been used in every culture since at least the ancient Greeks and Romans. So I don't think that there would be any difficulty in letting the ladies of Gondor wear hats in summer. In fact, since the Hobbits had umbrellas, there is no reason by the Gondorrim couldn't have them either. They could be like the pre-industrial Chinese ones, made of bamboo (or equivalent) staves and oiled paper.

 

Does the sort of period we're looking at accomadate some sort of hat or sunshade that a lady of the upper crust might wear to avoid this?

You can look at medieval straw hats on the Straw Hats in Medieval and Renaissance Works of Art site. Unfortunately, the Arnolfini hat she cites is probably beaver not straw.

It also doesn't have my favorite straw hat. I have a picture in a costume book, but I can't find an online link to it. It's from "King Rene's Book of the Tournament" and worn by the Duke of Bourbon. It looks like the worst kind of excess fringy-thing your mother/grandmother wore to the beach in 1965. The picture I have is black and white, but I like to imagine it in flamingo pink plastic.

I scanned the picture and put it up here for a giggle: Duke's Straw hat

Gwynnyd

 

Thank you, Gwynned, for the man in the lampshade!

Also, thank you Anna for suggesting parasols. I was begining to think: Maybe the answer is to make them damn well stay indoors, but parasols might work- I have a feeling the asthetic behind dressing aristocratic ladies was to make thier boring little lives as complicated as possible, and parasols would do that handily...

Cheers all!

Soubrettina

 

Don't forget the possibility of veils as well - in pictures or movies of medieval or roman times, you tend to see women with something draped over their head and/or some thinner fabric over the face on occasion.

Because movies are totally accurate.

 

High-class women were also dressed to display the wealth of their husbands/fathers/owners, be ornamental objects for said husbands/fathers/owbers, and demonstrate by the elaboration, restriction and fragility of their clothing that they didn't have to do manual labour, clean their own clothes or dress by themselves .

 

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