2006-09-21 - 12:02 p.m.
More on attifets...
Thank you for the comments, people. I must admit, my passing acquaintanceship with French had already led me past the related words and into the idea that it might have been used exclusively as a French word, but the heavy crossover of French and English during the period tends to argue against the relation of attifet to coif. The English, wishing to show off their cosmopolitan-ness (yes, that's also a word not to be found in the OED :P), picked up common French words and used them a lot to show off how educated they were. Elizabeth, who was fascinated with the French fashions, constantly tried to add French items to her wardrobe, but she mentions no attifet at any time. And really, I'm trying to pinpoint the use of the word attifet in England at that time because it bugs me when I see it promoted on web sites about costuming and they create this hideous wired monstrosity that doesn't resemble anything Mary of Scotland wore, no matter how definitively they swear it does. It has always struck me as a wrong item, just like the "Spanish Surcoat". The surcoat misnomer I can pin down to a particular publication (the Janet Winter/Carolyn Savoy book that was written for the California Renfaire), but the attifet one is eluding me. So far, all references I can find are modern, and the French definitions lead me to believe that if it existed at all, it was more likely some kind of head veil. I will need to brush up on my rusty French skills some more to read some texts; the web translations are less than helpful when it comes to older words. But. More likely, it is a Victorian affectation created during the Elizabethan revival in the late 1800s. Considering that the interest in Elizabethan history was high and the scholarship less than stellar in many cases, this seems the most likely explanation. A passing acquaintance with French then, as in Elizabethan times, made the author seem more academic to their readers, and "attifet" sounds more romantic than "coif", a term still used then by country people and other low-class types (note heavy sarcasm). Add to this the large number of "toilette" items with Frenchified (I know, I know) appellations, like scarves being called "fichus", and one could be forgiven for suspecting the Victorians of a little romantic idealization. (I happen to have a couple of fichus that belonged to my great-grandmother; they're lovely delicate things, fine Belgian lawn, pure linen of a type so delicate and transparent that the effect can't be reproduced anymore without resorting to artificial fibres.) More research is needed, but if I can manage to prove it, I'll put an article about it on my site. ...Because I like crushing dreams. Don't let anyone tell you different.
Dorsal - Ventral
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