page_title: Hennin
section_title: Definition
hierarchical_section_title: Hennin / Definition
caption_attribution_description: English: Costume of a 19th-century Lebanese princess. The tantour headdress was popular among Lebanese noblewomen. The elegant dress is an ankle-length gambaz, made in coat style of silk brocade shot with silver threads. Its long sleeves widen below the elbow, where they are slit to hang free. This gambaz is slit at the sides from the hips down, forming three panels of the skirt. A long shift (shirt) of silk gauze is worn under it. Not shown in the photo: The silk underpants are very full pantaloons in the Turkish style and are gathered onto rings at the ankles. The costume is completed by gold embroidered leather slippers with turned-up pointed toes. This costume belonged to the Lebanese Bureau of Tourism. العربية: امرأة لبنانية ترتدي الطنطور، وهو الزي النسائي التقليدي في لبنان في القرن التاسع عشر. لم يعد هذا الزي مألوفًا في مدن الساحل بعد عام 1840، واندثر في جبل لبنان بحلول أواخر القرن التاسع عشر.
context_page_description: The hennin was a headdress in the shape of a cone, steeple, or truncated cone worn in the late Middle Ages by European women of the nobility. They were most common in Burgundy and France, but also elsewhere, especially at the English courts, and in Northern Europe, Hungary and Poland. They are little seen in Italy. It is unclear what styles the word hennin described at the time, though it is recorded as being used in French in 1428, probably before the conical style appeared. The word does not appear in English until the 19th century. The term is therefore used by some writers on costume for other female head-dresses of the period.
context_section_description: Various writers on costume history use hennin to cover a variety of different styles.  Almost all agree that the steeple-cone style was a hennin, and the truncated ("flowerpot") versions.  Many also include the heart-shaped open-centred escoffion. Some also use the term to cover beehive-shaped fabric head-coverings of the mid-century (example). Others also use it for the head-dresses divided to right and left of the early part of the century, such as those in which Christine de Pisan is usually depicted (example).  In some of these only white cloth is visible, but in later examples worn by aristocrats rich fabric can be seen through translucent veils. Some use it for the horned hairstyle with a wimple on top.
  The Chronique of Enguerrand de Monstrelet records that in 1428, in what seems to be the first record of the term "hennin",  the radical  Carmelite friar Thomas Conecte  railed against extravagant headdresses of...
  ...the noble ladies, and all others, who dressed their heads in so ridiculous a manner, and who spent such large sums on such luxuries of fashion.
  Thomas urged street boys to chase after such ladies and pluck off their headdresses, crying "Au hennin!", even granting indulgences to those who did so, although as so often in medieval documentary records, no clue as to the form of the "hennins" is given.  Based on the evidence from visual records, they were probably not conical head-dresses, which are first seen slightly later. The Catalan poet Gabriel Mòger mocked the "tall deformed hat" (lonch cap deformat) that was popular with Majorcan women of the time.
caption: A recreated 19th-century hennin-like Lebanese tantour
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