No more bad hair days

I´ve been intrigued by the intricate braided hairdo's of German 15th century for a while and was happy when I discovered that they weren´t just the artist´s interpretation of an ideal, but that they most likely were fakes. Zopfe, or false braids, seems to be high fashion for the younger women and those of higher class. The higher society, the bigger the braids. Here are some examples of what must be fake hair:

More is more in Nüremberg, for sure, according to Albrecht Dürer.

In this one the real hair definetly differs in colour from the zopfe.

This is an earlier painting and the zopfe aren´t that exaggerated.

Here a version with inserted red, matching the gefrens beatifully.

There even is some extant examples of fake braids from the German area, made of stuffed cloth-rolls:

I have tried the filling out your own hair before, see here:http://renikasanachronisticadventures.blogspot.se/2013/05/fake-it-til-you-make-it.html

Now I wanted to go all in, and make me a full set of fake hair and browsing through a number of paintings I found that they really do not need to look natural. I did however not wish it to differ to much from my own hair, and luckily I had some scraps of a simple but beautiful reddish brown wool that was just enough to make three long tubes. I decided to fill them with more scrap fabric and in order to shape them nicely around the head, I made them thicker in the middle and thinner in the ends. I simply rolled them together and pinned it all and then sew them along the fold before braiding them.

I hade taken a rough measurement of my head beforehand, but had to shorten them a bit before sewing the ends together, trying my best to make them fit together nicely in the braid pattern.

Since the real hair is not shown other than over the temples and on the top of the head, I figured that it most likely was praided and either hidden under the Zopfe or, in some cases, in a hairnet covering the head under the Zopfe. This is how it looks on me with my own hair simply tucked in under the Zopfe. 

Now I need to finish the new gefrens and try it all out together.

Fake it til you make it

Since I got the kids my hair is just not as full any more and braiding it is not as fulfilling any more. But braids are not optional when reenacting German 15th century, they show under the headdress all the time. I was considering buying fake hair, but I don´t like modern fake materials (I can tell you stories of how much money that has saved me when stopping me from buying mixed material fabrics...). So just before leaving for Double Wars, a week-long event, the Curious Frau laid out pictures of fake hair made of strings or yarn, and even in fancy colours.

On the altar you see St Klara´s fake hair in bright blue and her gefrens in yellow. This had to be tried, I thought, waking up at four in the morning of departure and remembering a set of bright blue silk/mohair-yarn in my yarn basket. It was found in time and at the event I tried it out. I divided it into three, made a small braid holding it all together in the middle. The braided part I put in the neck and then divided my hair and braided it together with the blue yarn. The yarn being longer than my own hair helped keeping my braids together and lengthening them so that it easily wrapped around the forehead. These pictures show it worn with a simple orange gefrens.