Introduction

My Current Understanding of Victorian Beauty Ideals

Video from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PESy3qii7EE

I don't have much knowledge when it comes to history, which is why I guess I am interested to learn about the different eras! I have researched a few images online to see what the Victorians looked like and I can see that they were quite natural looking - they didn't wear a lot of makeup. I am going to research in more depth about how they looked and what cosmetics they used etc. This will give me an understanding about the era and to give me an insight into this project.

Image from: http://literatefreedom.org/6-4-literature/

Image from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/400820435559472438/

Victorian fashion print, 1850's.
(Photograph taken from the book
 Compacts and Cosmetics)

Book 1 - Compacts and Cosmetics, Beauty from Victorian Times to the Present Day - by Madeline Marsh

Chapter Two (Pages 17-35) - Unpainted Ladies - Beauty in the Victorian age

Unpainted ladies:
Makeup was considered indecent and face painting was for the use of actresses and street entertainers, hence the expression painted lady. Victorians weren't supposed to spoil of deform their own beauty.
The classic image of Victorian beauty is a 'peaches and cream complexion, cherry lips and a pair of sparkling eyes fringed by soft fluttering eyelashes'. The look was expected to be natural, a gift from God. Fashion guides stressed the cosmetic benefits of early rising, cold water fresh air and temperance. According to more extreme opponents of cosmetics improving the mind was a quick way of improving the appearance.

Advertisement for Beetham's
 Glycerine & Cucumber Lotion, c.1900.

Home-made Remedies and Secret Make-up:
Without concealing the skin, a fine complexion became even more important and was and indicator of youth, health and social standing. Fair skin and a white hand distinguished a lady from the working classes. The Toilette of Health (1834) recommended a blend of bitter almonds, oxymurite of quicksilver and sal ammoniac to remove suntan; suggested distilled juice from green pineapples 'to take away the wrinkles' and pimpernel water to blanch complexion. Greasy skins are benefited by either washing the juice of fresh cucumbers, strawberries or the water in which spinach flowers have been boiled.

Women searched their gardens for herbs and flowers to use as treatments for their faces. Lola Montez, an exotic dancer and famous courtesan, reports how Parisian ladies bound their faces with strips of raw beef as a night-time moisturiser, whilst Spanish women squeezed orange juice in their eye to add a bit of sparkle.

Obvious skin painting and shop-bought cosmetics were frowned upon. 'A violently rouged woman is always a disgusting sight and excessive use of powder is also a vulgar trick' insists Lola. So as long as makeup was almost invisible, worn only in the evening and preferably home-made it was acceptable.
The toilette of Health suggested darkening the eyelashes and brows with elderberry juice, burnt cork or burnt cloves; recommended rouging the cheeks by rubbing them with red ribbon soaked in brandy, and included DIY recipes for vegetable rouge (made from cochineal), simple face-powders and even a scarlet lip salve, tinted worth alkanet root.

Late 19th Century trade card for Pozzoni's
 medicated powder and a Pozzoni
powder box c.1912.

Criminal Cosmetics:
Because there were no health and safety regulations in place, women took to making their own cosmetics as they were worried what side effects manufactured could cause. One of the reasons for this is because mercury and lead were the main ingredients.
In 1863 Mme Rachel (born Sarah Rachel Russell, former old clothes dealer and alleged prostitute) opened a salon in Bond Street, London, claiming to be a cosmetic advisor to the Sultana of Turkey and Empress Eugenie. She offered a wide variety of products including Alabaster liquid, Circassian Bloom, Armenian Powder and Magnetic Rock Dew Water. All of which she claimed would aid the signs of ageing. Society ladies visited the salon for private consultations, costing twenty guineas a time! In 1878 she was sentenced to 5 years for defrauding and blackmailing her clients as most of her products turned out to be no more than bran and water. She later died in prison, but her name outlived her as Rachel became the name to describe a standard face powder colour which was best used in artificial light.

The Birth of Mass-Produced Beauty - The People's Stores:

Respectable manufacturers started to advertise the safety of their products saying they contain no lime, lead or arsenic. The improved quality and passionate advertising started the creations of this new mass-produced beauty industry. In America the 'Five and Dime' store, founded by Frank Winfield Woolworth, who opened his first shop in New York in 1878. He helped make beauty products more affordable, this enabled a wider audience to purchase them. 

In Britain the pharmacy business was revolutionised by Boots. In 1849, John Boot began selling herbal remedies from a small store in Nottingham, but it was his son who transformed Boots from just another local pharmacy, serving the middle and upper class into a chemist to the nation. He did this by buying in bulk thus enabling him to reduce his prices by as much as half, undercutting the other chemists. 

A collection of Victorian Cold Cream pot lids.

Buying a perfect skin:
Skincare was a booming industry. Cold cream was a long established cooling moisturiser. By the late 19th Century, it was produced by everybody from local chemists to Bond Street perfumers. Another Victorian favourite was complexion whiteners, designed to blanch the skin, remove spots, freckles and any signs of sunburn. New skincare remedies came from America and in 1840 Theron T.Pond discovered that native Americans were using a mixture of boiled witch hazel to heal burns and wounds. By the 1880's Pond's had expanded their range to include toilet cream, lip salve and soap.
Robert A.Cheeseborough, a young New York chemist, visited an oil well and found that a by-product of oil extraction was a 'rod-wax', a sticky petroleum residue that clogged up drilling rigs. He noticed the oil workers rubbed it on their hands to heal cuts and burns. He took a sample and in 1872, Vaseline petroleum jelly was made! It was initially sold as a medical product but ladies began using it as a moisturiser, hair oil and lipgloss.

A collection of vintage Vaseline containers
dating from the late 19th Century to the 1950's.

All of the information sourced is from the book above. 

Book 2 - Costume Reference 6: The Victorians - by Marion Sichel

(Pages 35 - 62)

Victorian Women

Middle-class ladies wore virtually the same clothes as the upper class. The characteristic shape of the 1840's was a dress where the bodice pointed towards the low fitting tightly corseted waist. Shoulders were droopy with tight sleeves; full skirts were almost ground length; bodices were joined together and hooks and eyes at the back. By the 1850's skirts became even wider so that the whole effect resembled a pyramid! The waist was no longer so pinched-in, but the wide skirts had to be supported by a hooped cage, and bodices and skirts were now often separated. 

Hairstyles
In the early 1840's sleeker hair was popular. Macassar oil was used so that hair would lie flat either side of a middle parting, the hair then being pulled back into a chignon (french term for bun) which was kept in place with a large ivory or tortoise-shell comb or hair pins. For evening wear the hair could be decorated with flowers, lace, feathers or jewellery, this was uncommon with young girls. Ringlets were also quite fashionable, not only at the sides but at the back too. Hair was decorated with ribbons and bows as well as flowers; even jewellery was entwined in the bun or back hair which could also be covered with a gold or silver chenille net. To add width, puffs or fine materials were also worn at the sides. In the 1840's day and evening styles were similar, with the exception that for evening wear long curls were more popular.

Victorian Makeup

Pastes, powders and paints were used to alter the appearance. People with acne or smallpox scars, or similar disfigurements often wore pastes to smooth their complexions. Most of these products were purchased at local pharmacies and through doctors. The upper class ordered from specialist dealers abroad. The poor were known to indulge by making home-made remedies. Ladies had already gone to limited use of makeup during or soon after the French Revolution (1789 - 1799), rouge being the exception. The church of England, along with Britains empire building, was determined to bring purity and modesty to women of all lands and Queen Victoria declared painted faces as vulgar. In the 1840's, only prostitutes and actresses, who many considered of the same kind, decorated their appearance with excessive paint and extravagant jewellery. However, limited use was the rule for most ladies. In the 1850's Creme Celeste became popular, which was a mixture of white wax, spermaceti (from an organ inside the sperm whale's head), sweet almond oil, and rosewater. This facial paste not only had moisturising properties, it also hid blemishes and provided a light smooth complexion. It developed into a common emollient and cosmetic remover, soon known as cold cream. 

Portraits from the 1840's to 1860's (Image from http://www.katetattersall.com/?p=3735)

Ladies of leisure would ensure well plucked eyebrows, perhaps even trim their eyelashes, and apply castor oil onto their eyelids and lashes. To hide freckles, blotches, or redness, they could dust on rice powder, zinc oxide or, the most expensive option, pearl powder, a mixture of chloride of bismuth and French chalk (talc) and provided a silky white cosmetic powder. On there lips they might apply a clear pomade (like beeswax) for shine and to provide protection. Some even contained dye to discreetly accentuate the lip colour, the favoured remedy was crushed flowers and carmine (made from the female cochineal insect). Many recipes for lip salve included evergreen bugloss, also known as alkanet, a common weed with blue flowers that provides red dye, the root in particular. For a healthy complexion, and to contrast the very pale skin of the upper class, red beet juice of a carmine dye could be massaged into the cheeks. For bright eyes, they used a drop of lemon or orange juice which was considered a cleansing method! Poisonous belladonna (a drug prepared from the leaves and root of deadly nightshade) was also dropped into the eyes causing the pupils to dilate, creating a luminous glow but clouding vision. People with cataracts were prescribed belladonna; Queen Victoria used it in her declining years feather than having surgery. Eye paint/shadow was popular, red and black used excessively by "fallen women" but very subtly by respectable ladies, who denied wearing it and would be insulted if anyone ever asked. Eye paint was made of mixed lead, tetroxide, mercuric sulphide, antimony, cinnabar, vermilion, and secret ingredients. Another choice was to put beeswax on their lashes, and then apply black powders, from soot to crushed precious stones.

Information from: http://www.katetattersall.com/?p=3735