History of the hooded cape.
The hooded garments came from the 12th Century
They date back to Medieval Europe or earlier. Monks wore tunics with hoods known as cowls and outdoor workers and travelers wore capes with hoods known as chaperon.
The word hood comes from the Anglo-Saxon word höd which has the same root as the word hat.
The English word cloak comes from the Latin cloca, meaning cape, and the Old French cloke, which was the same as the later cloche, meaning bell. The word was used because the most usual form of cloak in the early centuries AD, as well as in more ancient cultures, was a simple bellshaped design without fastening, made from a roughly circular piece of material with a hole cut for the head. A loose type of outer covering for the body has remained in use in all parts of the world since man first wore animal skins. Throughout the centuries the piece of fabric, large or small, was utilized by the ordinary man or woman as a blanket or bed-covering at night and a garment by day, its size and material varying only according to the climate in which it was being worn. It stem most often from societies where a person had to spend the night in cold weather or in the open and required protection from the rain and wind. Roman soldiers used their cloaks for this purpose, as did the Scots who wrapped themselves in their plaid at night and pleated and draped it round themselves by day. The earliest cloaks were simply fur skins held to the body by a leather thong or fastened by a pin at the shoulder. Later, the cloak became an outer garment worn over a tunic and hose; while in the more sophisticated times of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, this outer garment, still necessary for travelling, riding and keeping out the cold, had become an item of fashion in its own right, with an elegance of line and beauty of fabric and lining.
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