If I had to pick one word that sartorially sums up the disintegration of our society, it would be hoods. They have come to stand for nothing good. When not in ill use, a hood just hangs there, hinting at a certain lazy shabbiness: a hat attached to the back of a top for those who like to hedge their bets but couldn’t be bothered to bring a hat. (Although there are exceptions: on properly used waterproof jackets and duffel coats.)
More than this, the hood has, lately, got a real chip on its shoulder. Maybe it was sick of never being properly used, of always being appendaged to bigger, better garments, of never really being accepted in its own right. So it broke away and rose, Lucifer-like, to be the big boy in a bad world. Hoods are now the hoodlums of the wardrobe.
Where did hoods come from? One minute they hung innocently on the back of anoraks; if you were lucky it could be zipped away and out of sight. Your mum was always telling you to “put your hood up”, but no self-respecting person (or criminal) under the age of 50 would have been seen dead in a hood. Now they are everywhere, and deeply menacing.
Last autumn, I watched five burglaries that occurred over eight days. Each time, every person involved wore a hood. Not even a balaclava, if you please, that other bit of headgear long ago hijacked for misuse. But they were wearing hoods, their drawstrings pulled tight so as to hide as many distinguishing features as possible. (In a recent Blower cartoon in the London Evening Standard, carjackers were depicted in loathsome Gap hooded sweatshirt tops, as opposed to the now more innocent-seeming “squeegee merchants” in their “honest guvnor” woolly hats.)
How I long for the days of hats. You knew where you were with a hat. They could be lifted as a sign of respect, clutched to the chest to show or feign sincerity, and you instantly could tell if someone had no breeding, because they wouldn’t know when to take their hat off or keep it on. Hats also took some work – none of this “two products in one” approach that the hooded top has. Not least, you had to remember to bring it with you, then you had to hang it up: you couldn’t just push it off, as you can do with a hood, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Hats, alas, stopped being widely worn in the mid-1960s, but before that, most people wore them. Since then, and to this day, they have become the preserve of the slightly eccentric – George Melly, Marco Pierre White – or the royal family (you’ll seldom see the Queen Mum without a hat).
Until the late 20th century, hoods didn’t have much of a profile at all. They were, by their very nature, always seen as more casual than a hat, and often hinted at some mystery and wrongdoing – the mistress in her long black cloak, sneaking in to see her lover.
Yet they started off with a marvellous pedigree. The “English hood” was worn by ladies at court in the early 1500s (hoods were actually around from the mid-1100s, but they didn’t really take off as fashionable headdress until later). Then, as with so many things, the French influenced us and the French hood became the head-topping de son jours.
One of King Henry VIII’s six wives, Jane Seymour, briefly brought the English version back into fashion during her short reign as queen, although the French style was much preferred – it was perkier and infinitely more chic.
Hoods got really fancy in the late 18th century, when women could cover, but not squash, their elaborate hairdos with a calash – a hood made of silk, ribbed through with whalebone, which could be concertinaed down when not in use.
And there, with brief outings on opera cloaks and whimsical designs by Givenchy, hoods lay until the late 1980s, when John Galliano showed hoods, as football kit, that could be used as everyday dress. Galliano’s “look” heralded the use of sportswear as everyday clothing. As recently as 1996, the New York Times was remarking on how designers were being influenced by sportswear and “hoods” were now less utilitarian, more fashion items.
In his forthcoming book, The Supermodern Wardrobe, Andrew Bolton says this of hoods: “Often, when individuals wear hooded garments they not only lose their identities but also their accountability for their actions. However, the loss of identity and accountability does not always result in acts inimical to the community. As Nathan Joseph, author of Uniforms and Nonuniforms: communication through clothing, observes, a masked individual can lose ‘components of his ego, not to indulge his id but rather to enlist his super-ego in the service of the community, to submerge his personal identity for the good of the group’. For instance, masked participants in riots and protests often act in the name of economic and social justice. In many demonstrations, hoods and masks are forbidden because they circumvent the usual processes of accountability and wrap the perpetrator in a cloak of anonymity.”
Anti-authority figures argue that hoods are a fightback against the ubiquitous use of surveillance cameras and their infringement of civil liberties. A hat, though, properly pulled down, can be just as disguising without also being threatening. But then, wearing hats takes a certain style and individuality. In other words, you have to be prepared to stand out. Exactly what the hood-wearer does not want to do.
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