In praise of hoodies

Here at the end of the semester I’ve been reading the French historian Régine Pernoud’s 1977 book Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths. A delightful excursus from chapter two:

But we can also, quite simply, illustrate this sense of ornamentation, always renewed on the basis of the same theme, with respect to a detail of everyday life that was very characteristic of a whole mentality: the hood. This was the usual headgear of the period. It goes back to the mists of time, since the medieval hood is nothing but the hood cape of the Celts, our ancestors. This humble cape covering the head and shoulders gave birth to the “cowl” of the monks, but also to most of the headgear of men and women between the sixth and the fifteenth century. It has always and everywhere continued to be worn as a hooded cape, like those of the shepherds on the rood screen of Chartres or the peasants of Jean Bourdichon. But this same hood, placed so as to frame not only the face but the skull, while still composed of the same elements, is found continually renewed, whether by the material of which is its made (wool, velvet, satin) or by the way in which it is draped (the ends drawn forward, held in a turban, enlarged into a two-pointed hat…), so that it gives birth to all headgear, those still seen in frescoes, miniatures, and even in the Fouquet pictures. This hood, whose initial form has not changed but is ever reinvented, is very characteristic of the man who wears it, both through its extreme simplicity and functional character and through that perpetual invention in which the personality of its possessor is expressed. (43-4)

This happened to jibe perfectly with a couple recent conversations with friends about the hoody. Comfortable, adaptable to a variety of climates and social settings, with a range of cuts, colors, functions, accessories, and ways of wearing it that allow the wearer—endlessly and effortlessly, without the show or ostentation of fancier, less useful clothing—to show what kind of man he is: the hoody has made a worthy comeback in the last decades. It deserves better than to be associated with criminals or slackers. Remember that it is a mark of academic achievement to be hooded.

In this as in so many things, we moderns are only rediscovering the wisdom of the medievals.

I have owned many. The first that I bought and wore as a conscious item of fashion and comfort was a North Face hoody in navy blue, which I bought when I was in grad school at Clemson. Five or six years later my wife insisted I replace it, as its long service had made it truly holey. She gave me a dark grey North Face hoody (also a size up, aging being what it is), which has in its turn been replaced by a green one from Carhartt and now one made by LL Bean in navy blue, with a striking plaid lining. All have been full-zip, the only significant improvement upon the early medieval originals.