High collar, low collar, short hair, long
hair, boot, buskin, shoe--who wore you first? Who last condemned you
to the World's Great Rag Market of Forgotten Fads?

Now this, I have said, was a transitional age, but I cannot begin to
say who was the first great dame to crown her head with horns, and who
the last to forsake the jewelled caul. It is only on rare occasions
that the decisive step can be traced to any one person or group of
persons: Charles II. and his frock-coat, Brummell and his starched
stock, are finger-posts on Fashion's highroad, but they are not quite
true guides. Charles was recommended to the coat, and I think the mist
of soap and warm water that enshrines Brummell as the Apostle of
Cleanliness blurs also the mirror of truth. It does not much matter.

No doubt--and here there will be readers the first to correct me and
the last to see my point--there are persons living full of curious
knowledge who, diving yet more deeply into the dusty crevices of
history, could point a finger at the man who first cut his hair in the
early fifteenth-century manner, and could write you the name and the
dignities of the lady who first crowned her fair head with horns.

For myself, I begin with certainty at Adam and the fig-leaf, and after
that I plunge into the world's wardrobe in hopes.

Certain it is that in this reign the close caul grew out of all decent
proportions, and swelled into every form of excrescence and
protuberance, until in the reign of Henry VI. it towered above the
heads of the ladies, and dwarfed the stature of the men.

This curious head-gear, the caul, after a modest appearance, as a mere
close, gold-work cap, in the time of Edward III., grew into a stiffer
affair in the time of Richard II., but still was little more than a
stiff sponge-bag of gold wire and stuff and a little padding; grew
still more in the time of Henry IV., and took squarer shapes and
stiffer padding; and in the reign of Henry V. it became like a great
orange, with a hole cut in it for the face--an orange which covered
the ears, was cut straight across the forehead, and bound all round
with a stiff jewelled band.

Then came the idea of the horn. Whether some superstitious lady
thought that the wearing of horns would keep away the evil eye, or
whether it was a mere frivol of some vain Duchess, I do not know.

As this fashion came most vividly into prominence in the following
reign, I shall leave a more detailed description