Snood (headgear)

A snood (/snuːd/) is a type of traditionally female headgear, with two types known. The long-gone Scottish snood was a circlet made of ribbon worn by Scottish young women as a symbol of chastity.^[1] In the 1590s, snoods were made using Florentine silk ribbon for the gentlewomen at the court of Anne of Denmark by Elizabeth Gibb.^[2]

The other type was intended to hold the hair in a cloth or net-like hat.^[3][4] In the most common form, the headgear resembles a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head. It is similar to a hairnet,^[4] but snoods typically have a looser fit.^[5]

Decorative hairnets, popular among women in the Victorian era, were referred to as snoods. This term was then applied to any netlike hat, and, in the 1930s, to a net bag headgear. This latter meaning became popular during the Second World War when women joined the workforce en masse and were required to wear the headgear to avoid their hair getting caught by the moving parts of the factory machinery.^[3]

For a short time during WWII, the snoods were at the height of fashion (a hit of Paris collections in 1939).^[6]