Mongolian Haberdashery, Take 1

As you'll have seen, my SCA persona's life is complicated. The poor dear started as an unassuming Welsh merchant's daughter, and ended up traveling the world with her father and then kidnapped by a Mongolian mercenary.
As such, she has had to adapt her fashion sense to match her husband's culture at times, which, for a European, is a reach.

Now, I think most of us SCAdians with significant others of a different culture or time period don't really care, and just go about their business wearing their usual clothes.
However, when we won crown tourney a few years ago, we decided that because of the lack of non-European royalty out there, we would do a Mongolian reign.

At the time we won, I had all of two dels to my name, one of which was inaccurate, neither of which were particularly spiffy, and no hats. Now, even modern Mongols like their hats. So clearly this had to change.

Furthermore, the crowns of our kingdom are on the large side compared to my head, and therefore needed padding. In addition to many spiffy dels, some of which we made and some of which dear friends of ours made for us, I made myself two different padded silk bands based on extant Mongolian beaded headdresses. Both had beadwork along the front, and with the addition of a pair of silver hangers made by a wonderful local metalsmith, I can hang any of my long dangly beadwork from them. I love the versatility, because I can wear different colored beads with different colored outfits, and I don't have to have forty-seven headdresses to match. Examples of these can be found in my post about Mongolian headdresses.

I decided to make a boqtaq, which is the proper hat for a Mongolian noblewoman in the 13th century, and the hat that all Mongolian khatuns (empresses) wore. I wanted this to work with my versatile padded headdresses, as well as the crowns, and to be relatively neutral in color so as to be wearable with pretty much anything I had.

Several people have since asked me about how I made my boqtaq, and I have decided to put together a class on it. However, one of my A&S50 goals is also to make a period version with actual birchbark, so I am splitting this into two posts, one about the hat I currently have, and one about boqtaqs in period and the boqtaq I intend to make.

Like Wearing a Boot on Your Head: The Mongolian Boqtaq

Part 1: The First Attempt

Like many cultures in the middle ages, the Mongols had a lot of spiffy headgear. My first introduction to this was seeing Viscountess  Aramantha the Vicious of Northshield wearing her hair in the traditional wing shapes  adorned with silver and beadwork at a long ago Pennsic.

Sadly, that one is probably a more modern hairstyle, and so out of period (I still think it’s fantastic, though). This led me to investigate the more provably period headgear of the Mongols.

The most commonly seen royal headgear is the Boqtaq hat.

In period, the Boqtaq was made from birch bark, which in the northern regions of Mongolia and in Russia is fairly common. It was shaped from bark and then covered with silk and beaded.

The first time I saw the Boqtaq, it was in an image of Chabi, the wife of Kublai Khan. There are several other pictures, both of Chabi and of other Mongolian noblewomen, and I will admit I have yet to see a boqtaq that isn’t bright red, so I have obviously deviated from tradition with my gold one.

Since the few extant boqtaqs are basically flat remains, and in pretty rough shape, and I am not a real scholar, I based mine entirely off of the pictures I saw, and basically guessed.

Having no birchbark easily accessible to me without a lot of hassle, I investigated the possibilities through haberdashery supply stores.

What I found that made the most sense to me, both structurally and financially, was a fabric woven of straw, called Sinamay. I believe it may have some sizing in it already, but the instructions I saw for using it involved getting it wet, shaping it, drying it, and then spraying it with fixative.

I didn’t end up doing any of that. It is possible that those techniques would work better for some people with more haberdashery experience .

I believe that Chabi’s boqtaq is made in the following components:

The actual hat: tall, wider on top with flaps hanging off the sides, beaded.

The chin wrap: black, possibly made of two pieces? I think the two ribbons hanging down at the sides might be part of this. It clearly is going over her head and around her chin, though, and there is a lot of beadwork on it and hanging off it. I don’t know if the hat is permanently or temporarily attached to this.

The coronet: the red piece of fabric that appears to sit on top of the chin wrap, maybe weighting it down.

Beadwork: appears to anchor the hat to the coronet portion, probably eliminating the problem of the hat angling backwards instead of being straight up. Looking at some of the pictures of other khatuns, I think the piece at the front is a metal piece with pearls inlaid, because where the pearls hang down on either side of her face and on top of her hat, there is no background shown, but on the front triangular piece, there is clearly a gold background. I would guess this has some sort of attachment on the back of it (a loop or a hook or something) to sew or hook it onto the hat portion.

from the Art Institute of Chicago

19^th century Mongolian women (through some modern day women) wear elaborate caps made of strips of silk or leather with lots of beads embroidered on, and lots more beads hanging down from them. They appear to be the base for all of the hanging stuff.

This was what I used for my coronet padding hats, and all of my beads attach to them.

I didn’t want the boqtaq to be heavy, but I did want it detachable from my padding hats, so I could use it with any of them. 

I changed the shape a bit at the base to make that more possible (I think I would do this a bit differently in the future).

I made it out of four sides (it looks to me like it has a square profile from above), thinner in the middle than the top or bottom.

The first time I made it I sewed three of the sides together, folded them so that the seams were inside, and then whip stitched the last piece on. The downside to this was that when I wore it, all the raw edges poked my head. I fixed this by putting a piece of fabric on the underside of the hat, but on the next one I bound the edges with grosgrain ribbon instead.

The fabric covering was the same shape, only wider to allow for seams. I used dupioni silk because I had it around, but in period, it probably would have been similar to habotai (so no slubs). Again, I sewed three sides together, turned and pressed, made sure it fit the form, and then added the last piece from the right side.

For both the form and the fabric, I placed the bottom edge against the selvedge so that I didn’t have to hem it. I did overcast stitch the fabric to the form along the bottom and top edges, though.

I then stuffed the hat with quilt batting for extra support.

The last bits were the ties and the top flap.

I cut a square of fabric twice the width of the top of the hat, folded it in two and sewed it together. After turning and finishing the seam, I attached it to the top of the hat so that it overlapped evenly on the sides (those bits will hang down like the flaps on Chabi’s hat). I did not sew the flaps down, which might have been a mistake, seeing the fun it has during high winds. I probably will tack them down in the future.

It appears as though feathers on the top were an option, or possibly a later addition or an indication of rank, but I really liked them, so I put peacock feathers on mine.

Then I sewed the pearls on the front. For future reference, I recommend beading the front panel of fabric BEFORE assembling the hat, because it’s a pain to sew them on after.

Chabi appears to have some beads dangling from the top of her hat. I did put a jump ring up there so that I could add one of my bead danglies, but I’ve only done it once since the hat is so light it kind of overbalanced it. Bark might be stiff enough to work better.

Finally I made a 1” ribbon of the silk, and sewed the middle of it about midway through the bottom of the hat. I use this to add anchor points for pinning the hat on, and because Chabi’s hat has some ribbony things dangling at the sides.

The way I attach it is this:
I put on the padded hat, sit the boqtaq on top, put a pin through the front of the boqtaq, through the top of the padded hat (or my hair, whichever), put another pin through the back and through the hat/hair, and then pin the ribbons on each side. The ribbons are tied together in the back.

I frequently wear this over a veil, because that does seem to be the thing to do, and it looks good and adds more anchor points. The padded hat goes over the veil to lend stability.

The hat is light enough that I can wear it all day with no problems except its tendency to hit things if I lean back.

Future improvements:

• make the whole set up, to be permanently attached, beads included, therefore allowing for the hat to be shaped properly on the bottom
• Use red habotai silk instead of gold dupioni.
• Bead first, then assemble.
• Either bind the seams with grosgrain ribbon, or make the hat properly out of bark.
• I’d like to fix the problem where it sits at a 45 degree angle instead of straight up. This might be due to the shape of the base.