Progress - In the French Style

No gown is finished without the proper head wear. It completes the look if you will. Ann Boleyn was known for being fashion forward and bringing French styles of dress to the English court. One way she did this was through her head covering, appropriately named a French hood.











Thanks to elizabethancostume.net, what otherwise would have been a daunting task is turning out to not be so bad after all. I followed their directions with a few substitutions and it's coming along quite well. Alas, I could not locate any millinery wire so heavy duty floral wire had to do. But it seems to be working out. I was lucky, their pattern for a 1533 French hood fit me perfectly so I did not have to make any alterations in that respect. I did however make thinks a bit easier on myself. Instead of covering both sides of the buckram crescent (3 layers) I covered only the front. No one sees the backside anyway. As you can see from the first photograph I cut the velvet a bit larger than the pattern so I could fold it over the edges.

Then comes the fun part: embellishments! I found beautiful gold trim at JoAnne's that resembles the gold metal trims found in portraits of the Tudor era. I have also used 10mm Czech glass pearls purchased from shipwreckbeads.com and several buttons I turned into ouches. Eventually I will be adding 3mm Czech glass pearls between the ouches and larger pearls but I won't be able to do that until I get some special thread and needles....

Once I get all the embellishing done I'll add the black fabric "hood" part.