Cockade (pronounced ko-keyd)
(1) A rosette, knot of ribbon, etc, worn usually on the
hat as part of a uniform, as a badge of office, or the like.
(2) A feather or ribbon worn on military headwear, the
colors of which served as unit identification.
(3) In (mostly military) aviation, an emblem of
concentric circles of different colours, identifying the country to which an
aircraft belongs (often called a roundel).
1650–1660: As cockade, an eighteenth century adaption of the earlier cockard, from the French cocarde (a knot of ribbons), from the Middle French cocquard (boastful, silly, cocky), the construct being coc (rooster, cock) + -arde (-ard). The French suffix –arde was the female equivalent of –ard and was from the Middle French, from the Old French –ard & -art, from the Frankish -hard (hardy, bold), from the Proto-Germanic harduz (hard), from the primitive Indo-European kert- & kret- (strong). It was used to form pejoratives, diminutives, and nouns representing or belonging to a particular class or sort. The French cockade gained its name from the resemblance of the devices to a cock's crest, being from cocarde (feminine of cocard (arrogant, strutting) and thus cocquard (boastful, silly, cocky) which was an allusion to the behavior of the strutting rooster which appears so arrogantly boastful). Cockade is a noun and cockaded is an adjective; the noun plural is cockades.
The companion (an now more widely used) term rosette describes
a rose-shaped thing which may be an ornament, a fitting or any number of
circular things, the best known of which are those with many small parts in
concentric circles, especially when formed from a bunch or knot of ribbons and worn
as a decoration or award. Dating from
1790 from the French rosette (a diminutive of rose), rosette has a wider range
of application than cockade and in the abstract is a generalized term referring
to any number of stylized items which to one degree of another, are vaguely
rose-like. Rose was from the Middle
English rose & roose, from the Old English rōse, from the Latin rosa, of uncertain origin but it may via
Oscan be from the Ancient Greek ῥόδον (rhódon) (rose), from the Old Persian wṛda- (flower) and Middle Iranian
borrowings including the Old Armenian վարդ
(vard) (rose), the Aramaic וַרְדָּא (wardā) & ܘܪܕܐ (wardā), the Arabic وَرْدَة (warda) and the Hebrew וֶרֶד (wéreḏ)), from the primitive Indo-European wr̥dos (sweetbriar). The
–ette suffix was from the Middle English -ette,
a borrowing from the Old French -ette,
from the Latin -itta, the feminine
form of -ittus. It was used to form nouns meaning a smaller
form of something.
Girl with Cocked Hat (1925), oil on canvas by Walt Kuhn (1877–1949), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. It’s an example of early American Modernism.
Cockades fulfilled the function of maintaining the shape
of a hat and were usually formed as a bow or knot of ribbons. Inherently ornamental whetever their intended
functional purpose, cockades quickly came to be used to signify the wearer’s
identification with a political party, a particular military unit, or a
household (in the form of livery). They
could be a matter of life or death during the French Revolution (1789) because
the revolutionaries wore blue, white, and red cockades adopted from the colours
of the royal family and the city of Paris. The royalist forces and other reactionaries
adopted white, orange, or black and yellow cockades (depending upon the
nationality of the army in which they were serving), the French émigrés apparently
preferring white. The military often
retained the colors but the use of cockades as such ceased for all but a
handful of ceremonial uniforms when first armies and later navies ceased wearing
cocked hats. They’re still seen as a
fashion item and a few of the surviving royal households have maintained their
use in the leather cockades on the headgear of liveried coachmen and
chauffeurs.
Although it seemed an early call, Nylon, after surveying
the frocks at the 2023 Golden Globes, declared that rosettes were not only back
but trending, noting the catwalks at the European spring shows were lush with
floral themes. Their conclusion: when
roses bloom, rosettes surely follow. If
so, the fashion cycle is following the usual routine although the rapidity of cyclical
churn does seem to have accelerated; whereas for most of the period since the
seventeenth century when mass-produced rosettes first became a thing, the gaps
between their splashes of popularity could be measured in decades, now they
seem to be showing up every second generation.
Widely used in the 1980s (often as a bolt-on to the dreaded scrunchie),
they re-appeared early in the new millennium and now Nylon says they’re back.
Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) with Conservative Party rosette and Lord Toby Jug (Brian Borthwick, 1965–2019, leader of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire branch of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party until expelled in 2014 at which point he founded the Eccentric Party of Great Britain) wearing Eccentric Party rosettes, UK general election, 2015.
Still used around the world as (mostly amateur) awards in
sporting and other competitions, rosettes displaying party affiliations were
once a feature of elections in much of the English-speaking world but never really
caught on in the US where badges, buttons, banner and latterly, stickers were
preferred. In the modern age, their use
has faded just about everywhere except in the UK where they remain an essential
part of atmospherics of campaigning and New Zealand where they’re still
sometimes seen. In the UK, they’re now more
standardized than they were during much of the twentieth century when the sizes
could vary greatly and there was no such thing as an official party color, some
candidates even switching colors between polls, either at whim or in the quest
for electoral advantage. The advent of
color television changed that and the party leaderships insisted on a
consistent theme. The electoral
authorities also impose restrictions on the text which can be displayed and
limit the size of rosettes which can be worn at polling places. The convention of use in the UK evolved into:
Red: Labour
Blue: Conservative
Amber: Liberal Democrats
Green: Green Party
Yellow: Scottish National Party
Red, white and blue: Democratic Unionist Party
Green and orange: Plaid Cymru
Light blue: Reform UK
Purple: UK Independence Party
Nylon could be onto something. The sequined lace column gown by Valentino Lindsay Lohan wore for the Falling for Christmas premiere (New York City, November 2022) was embroidered with a floral motif. The reaction was generally positive.
