“Madame has no need to fear … the forgotten bill from the couturier; with an unconquerable smile and the magic aid of a coquettish madcap creation, what is easier than to hypnotise Monsieur into signing the erst-unready cheque as though it were his greatest pleasure!”

(quoted in Probert, 9). Here, the seductive power that allows ‘Madame’ to spend her husband’s money stems from the lingerie she is wearing – the ‘madcap’, a garment usually called boudoir cap. But how can a little lace cap have so great an effect?

Boudoir caps are heavily decorated soft hats made of lingerie fabrics like lace, chiffon and satin. Most caps are sewn out of fabric, but crochet was also popular. They can include trimmings out of velvet or glass beads. Colours range from pastel pinks and greens to black and gold but light colour schemes with white lace prevail. Immensely popular between the late 1900s and the early 1930s, boudoir caps were almost exclusively worn inside the house. There they accessorised undress garments like tea gowns or pyjamas, and functioned to protect the hair and flatter the face. The most spectacular versions included decorations like gold lace, tissue ribbons and even fur (Clark, 76). Some designs were so eccentric that Vogue named them ‘madcaps’.

In 1917 Vogue claimed that they could save the wearer from the “meanest badness a woman can do in all this big, bad world…to look ugly in bed”. (quoted in Probert, 9). An article in the Manchester Guardian from March 1924 distinguished between ‘The Right and Wrong Kind of Invalid’ depending on how well the woman is dressed when ill. While the good sick will dress up in a “becoming boudoir cap” and some pretty nightwear to receive visitors, the failed ill woman “neither possesses a boudoir cap nor will consent to wear the one that is generously pressed upon her”. (Manchester Guardian (12 Mar 1924), 6). This shows how essential the garment was considered to be for women in British society of the early twentieth century.