Balaclava

Balaclava (pronounced bal-uh-klah-vuh)

(1) A close-fitting, knitted cap that covers the head, neck, and tops of the shoulders, worn especially by mountain climbers, soldiers, skiers and others who operate in cold climates.

(2) A fire-resistant had covering in the style of the traditional balaclava but made of treated material.

1880-1885; named after Balaklava, a village near Sebastopol, Russia, site of a battle on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War (1853-1856).  However, the term describing the headwear does not appear before 1881 and seems to have come into widespread use only during the Boer War, some half a century after the battle.  The name Balaklava often is thought to be of Turkish origin, but is perhaps folk-etymologized from the Greek original, Palakion.  Balaclava is a noun and balaclavaed is an adjective; the noun plural is balaclavas.  What came to be called the “full-face” crash helmet was briefly advertised during the late 1960s as the “balaclava helmet” (also now used occasionally of what most call a “balaclava”) but the use never caught on.  In engineering, the non-standard verb balaclavaing is used as slang term meaning “the encasing of something with a cover, leaving only a small aperture to permit access for some purpose”.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a classic, knee-to-knee cavalry charge by the British Army against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War.  The battle, of which the charge is remembered as the great set-piece event, was a component of the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855), maintained in an attempt to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's main naval base on the Black Sea.  Sevastopol was (and remains) the largest city in the Crimean Peninsula which today is recognized internationally as part of Ukraine (except by Moscow which in 2014 annexed the peninsula). The strategic purpose of the charge was to prevent the Russian army removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions but, because of failures in communications, the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared and enjoying a textbook field of defensive fire.  Despite coming under heavy fire, the charge did reach the battery and scattered some of the gunners but the brigade was badly mauled and compelled almost immediately to retreat.  Causalities were heavy, some 300 of the 650-odd strong formation including 118 killed.  It prompted the famous comment from the French Marshal Pierre Bosquet (1810-1861): C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre.  C'est de la folie (It is magnificent, but it is not war.  It is madness.)

In many courses in organizational management, the events which led to the charge being ordered are used as a case-study in the breakdown of communications systems and how such processes should be designed to include failsafes.  Long regarded as a military failure, in recent decades, there’s been a body of literature by military historians suggesting the charge was a key incident in helping Britain to secure ultimate victory in the Crimea.  It's not a universally accepted view but it's certainly true many battles in the world wars of the twentieth century achieved less at greater cost.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward, 
All in the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 
“Forward, the Light Brigade! 
Charge for the guns!” he said: 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 
 
“Forward, the Light Brigade!” 
Was there a man dismay’d?   
Not tho’ the soldier knew 
Some one had blunder’d: 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do and die:    
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 
 
Cannon to right of them, 
Cannon to left of them, 
Cannon in front of them   
Volley’d and thunder’d; 
Storm’d at with shot and shell, 
Boldly they rode and well, 
Into the jaws of Death, 
Into the mouth of Hell   
Rode the six hundred. 
 
Flash’d all their sabres bare, 
Flash’d as they turn’d in air 
Sabring the gunners there, 
Charging an army, while  
All the world wonder’d: 
Plunged in the battery-smoke 
Right thro’ the line they broke; 
Cossack and Russian 
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke    
Shatter’d and sunder’d. 
Then they rode back, but not 
Not the six hundred. 
 
Cannon to right of them, 
Cannon to left of them,     
Cannon behind them 
Volley’d and thunder’d; 
Storm’d at with shot and shell, 
While horse and hero fell, 
They that had fought so well   
Came thro’ the jaws of Death, 
Back from the mouth of Hell, 
All that was left of them, 
Left of six hundred. 
 
When can their glory fade?    
O the wild charge they made! 
All the world wonder’d. 
Honor the charge they made! 
Honor the Light Brigade, 
Noble six hundred!

Usually, balaclavas are worn for warmth.

Balaclavas (some lightweight versions of which are usually called ski masks) are a type of (often knitted) cloth headgear which expose only part of the face, usually the eyes, mouth and sometimes the nostrils, thus protecting most of the skin’s surface area.  The more elaborate versions are adjustable and some can be rolled to become a hat or worn around the neck.  Although associated with use during the Crimean War, such garments had long existed and it was only contemporary publicity which led to the name being linked.  The war in Crimea coincided with the advent of convenient, portable cameras and large volumes of photographs produced, making it the first large-scale conflict thus documented.  The military at the time didn't appreciate the implications of journalists and photographers being able freely to report from battle zones and not for some time was it realized just how much intelligence the Russians were able to obtain simply be reading the London newspapers.  It was in some of these early images that the headwear first attracted attention although it wasn’t until the 1880s that "balaclava" (and “balaclava helmet”) came into use and it became a common term only early in the twentieth century, the popularity thought to have been encouraged by the widely published photographs of the polar expeditions to which were a feature of late Victorian explorations.

Camila Cabello (b 1997) in Vetements balaclava in black, Paris Fashion Week, September 2024.

For warmth, British troops wore knitted woolen versions of the headwear, which, early in the war were all handmade, knitted either on the spot (a kind of on-board cottage industry emerging on Royal Navy ships anchored nearby, knitting a commonly held skill of sailors) or sent from home in response to sketches sent in letters.  Later, knitwear companies would enter the market but the need existed only because poor planning and an under-estimation of the duration of the conflict meant most cold weather supplies never reached the troops.  The Crimean War was a shock to the British Army which, organizationally, was little changed from the Battle of Waterloo (1815), two generations earlier and the findings of subsequent boards of inquiry resulted in worthwhile, if still inadequate, reforms.  It was a not uncommon aspect of many colonial wars and exactly the same situation which confronted the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces, 1935-1945) in late 1941 when the harsh Russian winter arrived with the German advance still in open country, far from its objectives.  Balaclava are most associated with protecting the face from the cold but relatively thin, lightweight versions versions made with fibres chemically treated to be fire-resistant are used in motor-racing (FIA 8856-2018 standard) and other fields where exposure to flame is an occupational hazard.  They’re used also by both sides of the crime business to conceal identity; by criminals in an attempt to avoid detection and by those in law enforcement to protect themselves and their families from retribution.

Not all that appears on the catwalk catches on.  Knitted balaclavas were a thing in some collections at fashion shows in 2018 but, not unexpectedly, a high-street trend didn’t follow.

PopSugar's distribution of Lindsay Lohan's "Masked Shoot" for Marc Ecko's (b 1972) Fall 2010 campaign, undertaken during blonde phase and including balaclavas, August 2010.

Snood

Snood (pronounced snood)

(1) A headband once worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

(2) A headband for the hair.

(3) A pouch or net-like hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman's hair.

(4) In zoology, a long fleshy appendage of pendulous red skin that hangs over the upper beak of male turkeys.

(5) A short line of horsehair, gut, monofilament etc, by which a fishhook is attached to a longer (and usually heavier) line; a snell.

(6) A piece of clothing to keep the neck warm; a neck-warmer.

(7) To bind or confine (the hair) with a snood or (in other contexts) to put on a snood.

Pre 900: From the Middle English snod (fillet, ribbon (the plural was snoden)), from the Old English snōd (headdress, fillet, ribbon for the hair), from the Proto-Germanic snōdō (rope, string), from the primitive Indo-European snohtéh (yarn, thread), from sneh & snehi- (to twist, wind, weave, plait).  It was cognate with the Scots snuid (snood) and the Swedish snod & snodd (twist, twine) and related in various ways to the Old Saxon snōva (necklace), the Old Norse snúa (to turn, twist) & snúðr (a twist, twirl), the Old Irish snathe (thread) and the English needle.  The alternative spellings were snod & sneed, both now obsolete.  In Dutch, snood means “villanous and criminal.  The Dutch form was from the Middle Dutch snôde, from the Old Dutch snōthi, from the Proto-Germanic snauþuz (bald, naked, poor), from the primitive Indo-European ksnéw-tu-s, from the root ksnew- (to scrape, sharpen) and cognates included the German schnöde and the Old Norse snauðr.  Snood is a noun & verb and snooding & snooded are verbs; the noun plural is snoods.

In the Medieval period, snoods were most associated with young unmarried girls, the implication being “in a state of maidenhood or virginity” so were something like advertising one’s status on Facebook as “single”.  Merely adorning one’s hair with a snood was of course no guarantee of chastity so the system was open to abuse but social media profiles can be misleading so in a thousand or more years little seems to have changed.  Modern adaptations of the word have been opportunistic.  Since 1938 snood has been used to describe the pouch or net-like “bags” use to contain hear at the back of the scalp and these were well-documented as widely worn in the Middle Ages but nobody seems to have thought them snoods which were culturally specific.  The accessories dating from the late 1930s were sold in parallel with conventional hairnets and were worn almost exclusively by women, long hair for men not then a thing in the West.  Typically, they were a close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head but differed from a hairnet proper in that the fit was looser, and they were constructed with a noticeably thicker yarn, weaved in a coarser mesh.  The way they were worn varied greatly according to the preference of the user and the nature of the hair to be contained.  Sometimes, a tighter-mesh band around the forehead or crown, running over or behind the ears and under the nape of the neck held things in place, the woven “bag” containing the hair dangling at the back.  There were also snoods fashioned from a solid fabric, but the advertising of the era suggests these were for fashion rather than function and tended to be colored to match an outfit.  Snood-like constructions are also worn by some women in a variety of religions which demand some form of hair-covering although the interpretation varies.  In the post-war years as health regulations began more rigorously to be imposed in food production and other sensitive facilities, snood seems briefly seems to have been used to describe the hairnets which were being mandated for employees and others in the space.  There were “hair snoods” and “beard snoods” but it was a brief linguistic phenomenon and soon it was hairnets all the way down.

Samir Nasri (b 1987) in football snood.

In Association football (soccer), the word was for some years used to describe the specialized garments players used as “neck-warmers”.  Popular with some players and understandably so in a sport played in the depths of the northern winter, the team managers were divided on their desirability and there were reports that as recently as 2009, (male) media commentators (presumably from a nice warm commentary position) were recorded as saying snoods as neck-warmers were “unmanly”.  Use of such as word would now probably see a commentator cancelled (or worse) and if may be that if a player chose again to wear one on grounds of the ubiquitous H&S (health & safety), they might find officialdom too timid to react. 

Nike Football Snood.

Demand clearly exists because manufacturers continue to maintain the product lines despite bans on their use at the professional level, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and the Fédération internationale de football association (FIFA, the International Association Football Federation) acting in 2011.  The concern apparently was on grounds of player safety, the suspicion that injuries might result from a snood being pulled from behind and in those circumstances the awarding a penalty for the infringement would not be sufficient because the need was to avoid injuries, not simply punish transgressors.  However, there was no empirical data and the risks were all theoretical so both authorities outlawed the things on the technical basis of them being “not an approved part of the football kit”.  The football snoods aren’t actually exclusively “neck-warmers” because, fully unfolded, they actually can cover the nose and ears, both vulnerable areas in cold conditions and in competitions where they’re not banned, they’re popular with goalkeepers, usually the most static position on the pitch.  So, instead of being thought of as neck-warmers, they’re really half-balaclavas and in the US, where “football” is something different, they’re often called “soccer scarfs”.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates the difference in a muffler (designed for warmth, left) and a scarf (designed to be decorative, centre).  A football player is a fully extended football snoot, worn in extended, half-balaclava style (right); in the US these are sometimes called “soccer scarfs”.

There is a logic to that although “soccer muffler” might be more precise although, lacking the alliterative punch, it’s unlikely to catch on.  Until well into the twentieth century, muffler and scarf were used interchangeably but with the introduction of the baffled mechanical device used to reduce the noise from car engines, the automotive use swamped the linguistic space and muffler became less associated with the neck accessory.  Historically, muffler was mostly British in use, Americans always preferring scarf but scarf is now almost universal although in the upper reaches of the fashion business however, the distinction is sometimes still drawn between the two, a scarf defined as an accessory to enhance the look and made from fabrics like silk, cotton or linen whereas a muffler is more utilitarian, bulkier and intended to protect from the cold and thus made from wool, mohair or something good at retaining body-heat.  Confusingly, muffler occasionally is used in commerce as a label of something which looks like a small blanket, worn over the shoulders and resembling an open poncho.

Camisole

Camisole (pronounced kam-uh-sohl)

(1) A short garment worn underneath a sheer bodice to conceal the underwear; also called cami (pronounced kam-ee).

(2) A woman's dressing jacket or short negligée.

(3) A sleeved jacket or jersey once worn by men (now obsolete but occasionally revived as a catwalk novelty).

(4) As camisole de force, a straitjacket with long sleeves (mostly historic references).

1816: From the French and the Old Occitan (also called Old Provençal) camisola, the construct being camis(a) + -ola; the Late Latin camīsa (shirt) was also the source of chemise and the Latin suffix -ola was added to a noun to form a (sometimes pejorative) diminutive of that noun; a variant was the Late Latin camisia (shirt or nightgown).  The thread was well-known in romance languages, the Old Portuguese camisa (shirt) was from the Late Latin camisia (shirt), from Transalpine Gaulish (of Germanic origin) from the Proto-Germanic hamiþiją (clothes, shirt, skirt), from the primitive Indo-European ḱam- (cover, clothes).  The modern use meaning a “sleeveless undergarment for women” dates from circa 1900 but for most of the late nineteen the century it generally meant "straitjacket” (a restraint for lunatics). Camisole is a noun & verb and camisoled is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is camisoles.

Camisole de force: The straitjacket

Crooked Hillary Clinton in Camisole de force (digitally altered photo).

Although ad-hoc wearable physical restraints had existed long before, the camisole de force (straitjacket) was invented circa 1772 by Irish doctor David MacBride (1726-1778), the more romantic story of it being a creation of a Monsieur Guilleret, a tapestry maker at Bicêtre Hospital, apparently a myth.  The basic concept endures to this day although they are now less used, having largely been supplanted by camisoles chimiques (or neuroleptics (a class of psychotropic drugs used to treat psychosis)).  The only fundamental change in design is that modern camisoles de force are made with sleeves, the early types restraining the arms directly under the fabric were found to be most uncomfortable.

Camisole de force on the catwalk: Straitjacket chic by Gucci and others.

Catwalks were once a place where fashion existed for fashion's sake and while there could be social or political implications in what was worn, the messaging usually had to be some sort of overt threat to the establishment for much of a protest to be raised.  However, we live now in more sensitive times and designers have to be aware of factors as diverse as religion, ethnicity, skin color, sexual orientation, age, body mass index (BMI) and the seemingly all-encompassing "cultural appropriation".  Gucci recently had to withdraw from sale a jumper (US$890, Stg£715) after critics found it too reminiscent of blackface minstrels, the connection being the built-in half-balaclava with knitted plump red lips.  That fixed, the fashion house was then accused of cultural appropriation because one of their headpieces (US$790, Stg£635) too closely resembled a Sikh turban.   To clarify the extent of the sin, the US-based Sikh Coalition issued a statement: "The Sikh turban is not just a fashion accessory, but it's also a sacred religious article of faith."

Madness (an now unfashionable word banned in polite company; the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) recommending "mental disorder" or "psychiatric disorder") may also be on fashion's banned list after Ayesha Tan-Jones (b 1993, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns) staged a non-oral, verbal protest while on the catwalk (they might prefer the less exploitative "runway") in the Gucci show at Milan Fashion Week 2019.  Tan-Jones and other models were dressed in white jumpsuits for the show (and it can't be long before even the use of white is declared "problematic"), some of which used the motif of the straitjacket.  On their hands, Tan-Jones had written the words "Mental health is not fashion", clearly not accepting Gucci's rationale the designs were meant to represent "how through fashion, power is exercised over life, to eliminate self-expression".  That has some linguistic tradition because women have in the past not infrequently described demands to be fashionable as "a straitjacket" but Tan-Jones presumably would prefer the notion remain a simile rather than a publicity stunt.

Ayesha Tan-Jones on the catwalk, Milan Fashion Week, September 2019. 

After the show, Tan-Jones issued their own statement, writing "Straitjackets are a symbol of a cruel time in medicine when mental illness was not understood, and people's rights and liberties were taken away from them, while they were abused and tortured in the institution.  It is in bad taste for Gucci to use the imagery of straitjackets and outfits alluding to mental patients, while being rolled out on a conveyor belt as if a piece of factory meat."  That was followed up with another post which added they, along with some of the other models in the show, were donating to mental health charities a portion (% not mentioned) of the modeling fees paid by Gucci.  "Many of the other Gucci models who were in the show felt just as strongly as I did about this depiction of straitjackets, and without their support I would not have had the courage to walk out and peacefully protest" they said.  In response, the fashion house didn't address the substantive issued raised but did confirm straitjacket chic was just "...a statement for the fashion show and will not be sold", adding the line was intended as "...an antidote to the colourful designs in the rest of the Spring/Summer 2020 show".

Lindsay Lohan in camisole.