Few garments in European history are as striking or as instantly recognizable as the Azorean Hood. Known in Portuguese as the capote e capelo, this hooded cape was worn by women across the Azores — a Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic — until the 1930s. More than just clothing, it was a marker of identity, social standing, and the islands’ deeply layered cultural history.
The origins of the capote e capelo are tied to the waves of settlers who arrived in the Azores during the 15th and 16th centuries. People came from Flanders, Genoa, Britain, France, and mainland Portugal. Flemish settlers began arriving around 1450, and by 1490, roughly 2,000 Flemings lived on the islands of Terceira, Pico, Faial, São Jorge, and Flores. The Azores were known at times as the Flemish Islands, and many historians point to Flemish dress traditions as a likely influence on the hood’s distinctive shape.
The design of the Azorean Hood was built around function first. The Azores are known for unpredictable weather — sudden rain, strong winds, and damp Atlantic air. The capote e capelo answered all of these challenges. It combined a long, dark cloak with a large, structured hood that enclosed the wearer’s head almost entirely. The silhouette was dramatic and unmistakable.
The most common fabric was a thick, electric-blue cloth prized for its durability. A well-made hood could last for generations and was regularly passed from mother to daughter. The material’s quality and color weren’t just practical choices — they were a statement of family heritage. Wearing a fine hood told the community exactly where a woman and her family stood.
The hood’s design was not identical across all the islands. On Faial, for example, the cape took on an extravagant wedge shape that sat on the shoulders and projected forward significantly. Each island adapted the core design to suit local customs, but the defining features — the deep hood, the full cloak, the dark fabric — remained consistent throughout the archipelago.
Women wore the capote e capelo during church services, religious festivals, and everyday errands. It was a constant presence in public life. In 1869, American writer Mark Twain stopped in the Azores during his voyage and recorded his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described the hood with his trademark humor: “It stands up high, and spreads abroad, and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman’s head is hidden away in it like the man’s who prompts the singers from his tin shed in the stage of an opera… a woman can’t go within eight points of the wind with one of them on.” Twain’s mockery was sharp, but his description was accurate — the hood was enormous, structured, and all-consuming.
The garment carried real social weight. In Azorean society, a woman’s hood communicated her family’s status as clearly as any other outward sign of wealth or respectability. Women selected fabrics and colors with care, treating their hoods as both a practical necessity and a point of pride.
The photographs collected here document the capote e capelo as it was actually worn — on the streets, at celebrations, and in everyday Azorean life. They show the garment’s scale and structure in a way that no written description fully captures.
Thank you for the historical context, however, Twain’s remarks were offensive rather than merely humorous. While visiting the Azores he observed, “The community is eminently Portuguese — that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy…. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys they eat and sleep with.“
Twain suffered bouts of depression, and I wonder if his observations reflected his mental state at the time.