HAIR HORNS
A little bit Princess Leia, a little bit Keith Flint, Cornettes – or hair shaped into horns – were one of the Mediaeval era’s most interesting trends… and provide perfect evidence of the fact that weird beauty fads are nothing new. Popular throughout the 1400s, the trend saw hair plaited and styled at the temples into two horns. A play from 1460 describes a woman as being “hornyd like a kowe”, while the famous 15th century Van Eyck painting known as the Aldolphini Wedding shows the wife with two fashionable horns beneath her veil. The trend had a renaissance in 16th century Venice, where women of the court wore curly hair styled into horns, twisting and shaping the hair to create the desired silhouette – with some styles recorded by contemporary diaries as being half a foot tall.