Caps: At some point, we have all done it wrong...

Caps are one of those things that make or break an outfit. They are the easiest to fix, and yet, at some point, many of us have gotten things horribly wrong.

My mum at Louisbourg in 2013, bless her soul, I hated that cap.

See, even I have made some horrible mistakes. I dressed my mum in a hurry for this event, without having time for a fitting, and the cap was made in the car on the way to Louisbourg. It was a horrible style, made of too heavy a linen, and she wore it so that it swallowed her face. I hated that cap, and as soon as we were home again...actually as we were packing up, it went into the fire.

Figuring out what style of cap to make means doing some research...really, lots of research. Cap styles change dramatically over the course of the 18th and into the 19th centuries. As a friend recently said, caps are one of those things that can update an outfit in a heartbeat. They were simple and fairly inexpensive to make, and could be done up fairly quickly and easily with a bit of skill with a needle and thread. You might not be able to afford a new gown, but there's usually enough scrap to cut a new cap.

Kitchen Maid, Chardin mid century

An early layering of two styles of linen cap, a frilled under cap, with a plain lappet bonnet worn over.

Margaret Styles Manning 1770

 Two similar styles of cap to the one Mrs. Manning is wearing above, all late 18th century, but worn by a variety of women.

two servants late 18thC

Another style of cap, worn to frame the face, not to swallow it, and of a fine cloth that you can imagine you could see through.

The point I am trying to make here is that too often, we try to cover up our modern hair by wearing caps far too forward on the head. Modern cloth names have confused fine cotton muslin with heavy cotton broadcloth, so we buy cloth that is far too heavy for cap making. I wear my hair fairly short most times, but the thing I have done is to grow out my fringe so that I can pull the front of my hair back out of my face. I have made the investment of fine cottons and linens to make caps with, even going to the extreme of cutting up a second hand, thrifted linen shirt that was a good weight for cap making. And, I have changed my cap styles to be the 'common dog' of cap styles. I now wear a lappet cap like the three grouped images above, and another style closer to the portrait of the two servants. The choice of which one to wear comes from how much of my own hair I have to deal with, and which outside hat I want to wear, but also what I am going to be doing throughout the day, and what I am wearing for a gown.

me, in my lappet cap

in a frilled cap similar to the servant girl's cap, worn over big hair in back

When I moved into the early 19th century for a job interview and an upcoming event, I knew that I would have to make some new caps to go with the new wardrobe. My caps from the 18th century just wouldn't work.

This image seems to me to have the feeling of combining the two styles above. It frames the face, but also covers the hair. This was a good look for what I wanted to do, and so I pulled together a bunch of images of extant caps to work from.

my pinterest page is full of similar styles of caps

A cap similar to the lappet cap from the 18thC, which could tie under the chin, with lots of flouf.

My interpretation, leaning towards the mid to late 18-teens

test run

So I seem to have gotten the front of this cap fairly decent. I am framing my face with the cap, nice bit of room for my curls at the front, fits the nape of my neck nicely. You can see though, that the back needs some help. Either I have to make the caul smaller, or add to my hair with some rats (or both). Yesterday, we went out and bought a hair piece (a rat), and I will try that out with the cap to see how things work out. I am close, and far happier with the results than I imagined.

The cap itself is made from materials gifted to me from a friend, fine cotton mull and a bit of hand-made bobbin lace that was 'just enough' for the frill.

I should be able to wrangle a kitchen well enough in this style, not having to worry about it shifting on my head at all. Hopefully my sausage curls will stay nice and tight. Modern hair shellac might be deployed for the day of, just to be on the safe side. My hair is cut fairly short, at chin length these days, but if I decide to go shorter next cut, I could still rock out a historically correct hair style by keeping the front fringe forward and curled to within an inch of its life. I'll have to deal with that caul though...