The Georgian era is incredibly well known for the heavy and sometimes dangerous makeup that aristocratic men and women painted their faces with. Prior the French Revolution, the aristocracy had a desired look to be deathly pale with beauty spots and fake veins drawn onto the skin!
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| Kitty Fisher |
To achieve the fashionably pale skin, people would paint their faces and skin with pastes and powders usually with lead paint! Now we know that lead is a highly poisonous toxin but this was unknown to the Georgian society! Sadly, the lead paint led to painful open wounds and in some cases even premature death. The famous Georgian socialite Kitty Fisher is suspected to have died due to lead poisoning. However in the Regency era (George IV and William IV), the wealthy wished for their young ladies to have a healthy natural looking skin. Unlike today, where tanned skin is very trendy (especially in Essex!), to have tanned or sun burnt skin was frowned upon because only people who worked were supposed to have tanned skin as a sign of their status that they had to work for their keep as a pose to having employees to do it for you!
Rosy cheeks were also in fashion and the only colour available was red! Yet if you wished for a toned down colour then you would mix some of the white powder into the red pigment. Lipstick would be created from mixing the red pigment with bee's wax or cocoa butters. Eyebrows would be darkened to emphasise the white face!
Peddlers would sell velvet beauty stops/patches which would be stuck to the face. These came in various shapes such as hearts, diamonds, half- moons and circles.
After the French Revolution, the aristocracy and middle class calmed down a bit with the white makeup, preferring a delicate natural appearance.
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