When did wearing elaborate headpieces such as hats, tiaras, fascinators, and veils become associated with the nobility and royalty, and was there ever a time when your average middle to lower class woman owned and wore similar headpieces?

by Rach5585
mimicofmodes

Tiaras have never been anything but an elite fashion. They're mini-crowns - often part of a full set of jewelry. And the modern fascinator is very modern, probably dating to the 1990s at the earliest, so there's not much to say about them here.

Hats and veils, however, have a long history as everyday dress for women at all levels of society. I have an answer here about the decline of hats (mens, but the story is roughly the same for women's) in the twentieth century, and I discussed changes in women's headwear over a longer timescale in this other answer. As they became too formal for normal everyday dress, they became more associated with people who dress formally more frequently - the upper classes.