Hat Plays Sims

*looks at pics* Okay, the first thing I can help you with is that your DevArt source pic is on a foam head (which is usually smaller than a human head, so things slide around) and angled differently than it would be on a person in order to get it all in the frame, plus it's got a hood thing that is probably designed to help it stay on-- which is clever, but not accurate-- and your line drawing is from the Victorian era. (You can't trust the Victorians. They made things up to suit their own worldview all the time. It's super-frustrating.)

Here are my best two period examples of a steeple hennin:



A detail of a painting by Hans Holbein. You can see that the cone of the henin rises fairly smoothly along the cranium, although this lady has chosen a black band around the henin instead of lappets to show off her mad braiding skills.



And another detail, from a load of French (my URL tells me it is Meister des Jouvenil des Ursins). You can see the back of the henin here is close to the head, and this lady has chosen not to have any sort of band or lappets on her henin at all, probably to show off her high, plucked hairline.

I do know lappets were worn with steeple hennins; the first post here shows a noblewoman wearing an only slightly truncated steeple hennin with the same sort of lappets you'd see on Bipsouille's truncated/flowerpot/Burgundian hennin (scroll down to The In Thing). I'll admit I'm not entirely sure if the veil is supposed to go under or over the lappets. I can easily picture it either way, though for ease of alpha editing, veil over lappets probably works best. Usually, steeple hennins are seen without lappets, though sometimes with a band as in the Holbein image; the Fortune's Wheel picture in the same Medieval POC post shows Dame Fortune herself as well as another pair of ladies in line wearing their hennins without anything around the brim.

The little loop you see on all the ladies' foreheads is theorized to be part of some sort of wire underpinnings that keep most kinds of hennins (steeple, truncated, flowerpot, what have you) from toppling off a lady's head, because they're seen on pretty much every portrait featuring a hennin from the front.

And because I understand physical costume construction WAY better than meshing, that's about all I can help you with. I know somewhere in Medieval POC, there's another post about Dame Fortune and her wheel that has a larger copy of that image, but I'm not 100% sure where. I'll go digging for it if you want a closer look. If you've got more questions about the way the actual hats go together, hit me up and I will throw sources at you until the cows come home. (Kat's Hats is one of my favorites for real pics, but all the best steeple hennins I've found have been in period artwork.)