pouf! The Transcendent Head-Dress

The coiffure of a woman of 1780 was  a remarkably complicated affair; so complicated, in fact, that certain women, by way of avoiding fatigue or expense, had their heads dressed only two or three times a week, sometimes only once, and slept in this heavy, uncomfortable, voluminous rigging, of which their own hair was assuredly the least important element. False hair being very costly, the interior of the fragile edifices was often stuffed with horsehair, and even with hay. In some cases a brace of iron wire was affixed to the head, upon which flowers, feathers, ribbons, and jewelry could be firmly attached; and thus the scaffolding frequently rose to such a height that, if we may credit the caricaturists of the day, it was necessary to pierce the roofs of the sedan-chairs, and even of the coaches, in order to accommodate les elegantes in gala costume.


source: Garrick's Pupil by Augustin Filon


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Coffee was served to us, while I glanced over the Gazette de France, which was at that time, if I am not mistaken, the only daily paper existing in Paris. I had been reading for about ten minutes, when, starting with a sudden emotion, I struck the table with my knee and upset my cup, which I had left untouched, so absorbed was I in my reading.

"Well! Leonard, what's the matter with you?" exclaimed my friend while wiping his breeches wet with coffee.

"Here it is ... here it is revealed, this art which your master prides himself on having discovered. ... It is not he, zounds! who first understood the transcendent head-dress, it is a lawyer."

"I say! are you getting mad?" said my friend, with an air of amazement.

"Mad—well, so be it, but mad with inspiration. . . . And this inspiration, grand, sublime, capable of undertaking everything, I receive from a disciple of Cujas. Listen, friend Fremont, listen to this extract from the Memorial in favor of the lady hairdressers against the society of master barbers, wig-makers, bath-keepers. ... It is a masterpiece."

"Ah! yes, I know; this suit is being brought before the higher court. The wig-makers act on the authority of a so-called exclusive privilege which turns over to them, so they say, all heads, both male and female, . . . but we have on our side the wives of the presidents, of the councilors, of the Masters of Requests, of the clerks of the court; if need be we shall have the swords of the light-horsemen and the musketeers. . . . The ladies have promised it."

"And better than all that, we have the pen of the great legist who wrote this Memorial; listen, listen:"

"'The art of dressing ladies' hair is a free art, like poetry, painting, sculpture. By means of the talents which we possess, we bestow new charms on the beauty of which the poet sings; it is often through us that painting is inspired, and if the Hair of Berenice has been placed among the constellations, who will say, that in order to reach this high degree of glory, she did not require the services of a hairdresser?


"'A forehead more or less broad, a face more or less round, require very different treatment; everywhere it is necessary to improve nature or repair its blemishes. Moreover, it is proper to reconcile with the flesh-tones the color under which the head-dress is to be presented. ... It is necessary to know the shades, the use of dare-obscure and the distribution of shadows so as to give more life to the complexion, more expression to the eyes, more attractiveness to the charms. Some times the whiteness of the skin will be heightened by the darkness of the hair; or the too great brilliancy of the blonde will be moderated by the pale gray color with which we cover the head-dress.'"


I felt all that, but I should not have expressed it in such a beautiful manner.

"Do you want me to tell you something?" I resumed in solemn tones: "Before three years Leonard shall be the foremost hairdresser of the universe. . . ."

"Pshaw! . . . You will favor me, will you not?"

"You shall be my assistant. . . ."

"Well! I shall not be so badly off: second hairdresser of the universe! Where do you dwell that I may go to-morrow morning to ask you for my diploma? . . ."

"No. 15, rue des Noyers, in a room eight by four feet," I replied, assuming the bantering tone which my friend had taken, and which, fortunately, suddenly drew me out of the ridicule into which I was about to sink to the very neck.

"Rue des Noyers! Jean Leonard, the neighborhood is ill selected to found the throne of universal hairdressing. . . ."

"Jest as much as you please; but this is how I reason since I have read the beautiful address of the hairdressers: I want the head-dress to express, modify, and disguise the passions; I want to soften or embolden the eye; that it be either coquettish, languishing, melancholic, or conquering; that it glide unperceived into the heart, or take it by force like a soldier on the charge. ... I want, friend Fremont, that a new Jouvence spring from my comb: if Heaven helps, women will from henceforth not be old before they are past sixty; and the life of young beauties may be spent, wasted even, without showing it."


source: Recollection of Leonard: hairdresser to Queen Marie-Antoinette By  Léonard Alexis Autie Léonard

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"The coiffures, those indexes of the taste of the moment, were also reflections of what the French Court took to be English fashions; ladies afflicted with "Anglomanie" carried upon their plastered heads an entire racecourse, with horses, jockeys, dogs, and a few five-barred gates, the mixture of racing and hunting being, of course, typically British. Perhaps Joseph's animadversions upon the madness of head-dresses were caused by the special visit before-mentioned to the Duchesse de Chartres, who, in a Court that calculated its coiffures by the yard, made it her ambition to outdo the most enterprising; and she would almost certainly be arrayed in the most advanced of her modes for an Imperial visit. The memory of the Duchesse de Chartres is enshrined in one monstrous coiffure that she designed with the aid of Leonard. Fourteen yards of gauze covered the scaffolding of a tower upon her head, designed by the architect to exceed by two inches the height of the "coiffure a loge d'opera" worn by the Queen. From the summit of the tower waved feathers; and upon the building were two waxen figures, representing her son, the Duc de Valois (afterwards Louis Philippe), in the arms of his nurse. Besides these there were a black boy, a parrot, a plate of cherries, and (worked in their own hair) the initials of her husband, Duc de Chartres, of her father, Duc de Penthievre, and of her father-in-law, Duc d'Orleans. This erection was called "le pouf sentimental." It is interesting to remember that its creator, Leonard, the Court coiffeur, died in the enjoyment of the appointment of Inspector-General of Funerals, an office bestowed upon him in answer to his application for that of director of the Opera-Comique."



source: "The guardian of Marie Antoinette: letters from the Comte de Mercy ...", Volume 2
 By Lillian C. Smythe, Florimund Mercy d'Argenteau

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It was no longer the nodding plume of the "Ques-a-co?" That for the moment had given place to two other new and equally artistic designs, named respectively, "coiffure de /'inoculation," and "coiffure mythologique." The scaffolding on which the gauze, crape, lace, and other materials were spread was higher by five inches, for both these head-dresses, than that of the Ques-a-co? The "inoculation" was decorated with "ornaments de circonstance,"— representations of the rising sun, a serpent, a club, and an olive tree. It was a sort of pictorial enigma. In a small daily paper of the time, edited by Metra, it is thus explained:— "The rising sun represents Louis XVI., to wards whom all hopes are turned; the serpent is the smallpox; the club, the art of the physician which has overthrown the monster; and the olive tree symbolizes the peace and happiness with which the successful inoculation of the princes has suffused all hearts." The mythological head-dress was ornamented on one side with a cypress, denoting the mourning of the nation for Louis XV. On the other was a cornucopia overflowing with every good gift, and emblematical of the good time coming.

The circumstances of the moment made it de rigueur that every woman of distinction should appear in one or other of these elegant concoctions on occasions of ceremony, such as that referred to above, called the " reception de grand deuil." The poor old dames de province appear to have been ignorant of this. And they may have considered their ignorance bliss, as they gazed with awe on those lofty edifices; wondering, perhaps, that heads so weak could carry such monstrous burdens. "The few that remain of the old school," says a French writer of the time, "have indeed great reason to say that good taste is in all things departing from us. To my mind, nothing proves it so much as this kind of senseless mythology, which our women of highest rank, following the example of the queen, now carry about piled up on their heads."


source: The French Court and Society: Reign of Louis XVI, and First Empire
 By Lady Catherine Charlotte Jackson


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For instance, English and French ladies in the eighteenth century affected most extraordinary styles of head-dress. The Parisian ladies delighted to wear a coiffure called the Loge d'Opera, which, in its alarming height, must have been prophetic of the great tower which now stands on the field of Mars. From the top to the tip of the chin of the wearer was a distance of seventy-two inches. This aspiring structure was formed in three zones, each parted in a different way. The pouf coiffure, not quite so high, but equally prevalent, was a heterogenous composition of feathers, jewellery, ribbons, and pins, into which butterflies, birds, painted cupids, branches of trees, and even vegetables, were introduced. There was also a sentimental pouf. The Duchess de Chartres appeared at the Opera in one of these, and it must have been an imposing affair, although it would perhaps be more conducive to a mirthful than a sentimental state of mind in the beholders. Upon it was represented her eldest son in his nurse's arms, a parrot pecking at a cherry, and a little negro boy! This latter "property" calls to mind another "freak of fashion" of that period, which consisted in great ladies keeping a negro boy, just as in our day they find delight in being accompanied by and fondling poodles.

The sentimental coiffure was not alone in its eccentricity. There were coiffures representing landscapes, English gardens, mountains, and forests, and to such lengths, in a literal sense, was the fashion carried, that at last the police interfered, preventing the appearance at the theatre of ladies whose head-dress would obstruct the view of those behind them.

The " commode " coiffure is the English counterpart of the French Loge d'Opera and other monstrosities. So high was it worn, that fashionable ladies were obliged, in travelling, to lean out of their coaches, being willing, such is the power of fashion over its votaries, to make themselves ludicrous, in the eyes even of their contemporaries, in order to obey its decrees. There is indisputable evidence to prove that the "commode " was equal in height to the stature of the wearer. A contemporary lady writes—"On my head a huge commode was sticking which made me appear as tall again." This statement, if alone, might be suspected of a tinge of feminine exaggeration, were it not supported by others, among them being one by that famous essayist and shrewd observer, Addison, who, in one of his essays, written when the fashion was going out, speaks of " the number of ladies who were formerly seven feet high, but who now want some inches of four."

source: "Freaks of Fashion", Atalanta, Volume 8

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A story illustrating Marie Antoinette's good nature is told. Her regular hairdresser was the reverse of clever, but rather than dismiss him she allowed him to do her hair regularly; but he had no sooner completed his work than Leonard came to undo all he had done, and to build up a new edifice.
Leonard was the inventor of different modes of wearing the hair, each outrivaling the other in intricate and elaborate designs.


One was called the coiffure a In dauphine, in which the hair was gathered up and rolled into curls, which fell to the neck. The coiffure a la monte au ciel, as its name indicates, was remarkable for its extreme height; but most wonderful of all was the full-dress coiffure called loye d'opera, which made a lady's head seventy-two inches high from the chin to the top of the hair, which was arranged into several zones, each one ornamented in a different way, but invariably completed with three large feathers, attached on the left temple, with a bow of rosecolored ribbon and a large ruby.



Apropos to the capricious sway of Marie Antoinette, it is said that one day she took from her dressing-table two peacock-feathers, and placed them, with several little ostrich-feathers, in her hair. At once feathers became the fashion, not only in France, but throughout Europe. But when poor little Marie Antoinette sent a portrait of herself to her august mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, it was returned with an unqualified snub. "I have received the portrait of an actress, not that of a queen," writes Maria Theresa. "I am expecting the right one."


Nothing daunted, the gay French Queen continued to invent all sorts of fantastic fashions, which were eagerly adopted. Mademoiselle Bertin, a court milliner, writes: "The last time I worked .with the Queen we decided that the new caps should not come out for another week." A demi-nigligie cap, invented about this time, possibly by the Queen or by Mademoiselle Bertin, bore the name of le lever de la reine.


So little did it take to introduce a new mode in this capricious age! A gust of wind disheveled the tresses of the Duchesse de Fontanges ; she tied her headdress on her truant locks with one of her ribbon garters. The effect was so charming that the fashion called coiffure a la Fonttinges soon became universal.

The coiffure a la Belle Poule consisted of a ship in full sail reposing on a sea of thick curls. This arrangement of the hair was invented after the naval combat in which La Belle Poule had figured to great advantage, June 17th, 1778. The frigate itself, with its masts, rigging and guns, was imitated in miniature in the headdress.
Gabrielle d'Estrees wore her hair frizzed and drawn back in the shape of a heart, and so ornamental and loaded with pearls and diamonds that she "outshone the light of the torches."




In 1778, Devismes, the Director of the Opera in Paris, made a rule excluding from the amphitheatre all but headdresses of a moderate height. This nuisance seems to have lasted until January, 1784, when Lenoir, Lieutenant of the Police, addressed a letter to the actors of the Italian Theatre, in which he says: "There are constant complaints of the size of the headdresses and hats, which, being loaded with plumes, ribbons and flowers, intercept the view of the spectators in the pit."
                                                                                     source: The American Magazine, Volume 26

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In 1767, a writer in the London Magazine, remarking that the English people are said to be singular for extremes in taste, adds: "I think it was never more flagrantly exemplified than at present by my fair countrywomen in the enormous size of their heads. It is not very long since this part of their sweet bodies used to be bound so tight, and trimmed so amazingly snug, that they appeared like a pin's head on the top of a knitting-needle. But they have now so far exceeded the golden mean in the contrary extreme, that our fine ladies remind me of an apple stuck on the point of a small skewer."

 By contrasting the head-dress of the lady in the cut already given upon page 378 with the following group, the reader will at once detect the great change effected by fashion in this particular portion of female costume. Figs. 1 and 2 are copied from engravings by G. Bickham to The Ladies' Toilet, or the Art of Head-dressing in its utmost Beauty and Extent, translated from the French of "Sieur Le Groos, the inventor and most eminent professor of that science in Paris," published in 1768. The figures in this very curious book (of which there are thirty), were so much admired in Paris, that we are told, "not only all the hairdressers of any note have them, both plain and coloured, in their shops, but every lady's toilet is furnished with one of them, very elegantly bound, and coloured to a very high degree of perfection." To describe fig. 1, in the author's own words: "This head is dressed in two rows of buckles (or close curls), in the form of shell-work, barred and thrown backwards; two shells, with one knot in the form of a spindle, composed of a large lock or parcel of hair, flatted, or laid smooth, taken from behind the head, in order to supply the place of a plume or tuft of feathers." Fig. 2 is "dressed with a row of buckles, the roots whereof are straight, two shells (on the crown of the head), and a dragon or serpent (at the side of the head, reaching to the shoulders), composed of two locks of hair taken from behind the head, with a buckle inverted (running upwards from the nape of the neck to the crown, where it is fastened by a comb). These serpents or dragons are seldom worn but at court-balls, or by actresses on the stage."

It would be impossible to do more than give types of a fashion that was so varied and so elaborate, which increased both in size and intricacy of fancy during the next two years, as we may judge from figs. 3 and 4, a back and front view of a lady's head, from A Treatise on Hair, by David Ritchie, hairdresser, perfumer, &c.; for in these days hairdressers were great men, and wrote books upon their profession, laying no small claim to the superior merit of "so important an art;" and not content with merely describing the mode of dressing the hair, " favoured the world" with much learning on the origin of hair, affirming it to be " a vapour or excrement of the brain, arising from the digestion performed by it at the instant of its nourishment;" with many other curious and learned conclusions, into which we cannot think of following them.

The figures selected from this book will shew with what care and dexterity ladies' heads were then dressed, " with many a good pound of wool" as a substratum, over which the hair was dextrously arranged, as the reader here sees, then bound down with reticulations, and rendered gay with flowers and bows. Heads thus carefully and expensively dressed were, of course, not dressed frequently. The whole process is given in the London Magazine of 1768:

 "False locks to supply deficiency of native hair, pomatum in profusion, greasy wool to bolster up the adopted locks, and grey powder to conceal dust." A hairdresser is described as asking a lady "how long it was since her head had been opened and repaired; she answered, not above nine weeks; to which he replied, that that was as long as a head could well go in summer; and that therefore it was proper to deliver it now, as it began to be a little hazarde." The description of the opening of the hair, and the disturbance thereby occasioned to its numerous inhabitants, is too revolting for modern readers; but the various advertisements of poisonous compounds for their destruction, and the constant notice of these facts, prove that it is no exaggeration.


source: Costume in England: a history of dress from the earliest period till the ...
 By Frederick William Fairholt

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Abundant employment was ensured to fashionable hair-dressers while this taste for high and elaborate hair-dressing was in vogue. Ladies submitted to all kinds of inconveniences in indulging the fashion. On public occasions, such as Birthdays at Court or County Balls, the demand for dressers exceeded the supply; and girls of spirit, who were determined to appear in full costume, and be quite sure of no disappointment with barbers, took time by the forelock, had their heads dressed a day or two before the appointed period of meeting, and sat up for a night or two propped in chairs, with pillows under their precious curls to prevent disarrangement. In an ordinary way, a head, when full-dressed, was too elaborate a thing to be often disturbed, and the following extract, from a periodical called The Old Maid, records a conversation with a lady, who frankly owns that three weeks had passed since hers was "made up ":—

"Three weeks, Madam," said I; "ha'n't you been a-bed since that?' "Regularly every day." "Pray, Madam, don't that lay you under the necessity of dressing your hair every evening when you rise?" "Oh, lord, no!" says Miss, smiling at my ignorance; "a head properly made up with pins, paste, and pomatum, will keep a month very well." As she talked of her head in the style of pickled pork, I ventured to ask her whether the paste and pomatum would keep as long ?" Certainly," said she, "if prepared with the veritable eau de Jleurs des arbres."


The advertisements of the day abound with notices of washes and poisons to use in the hair and prevent the generation of various living things which so much powder and pomatum would encourage. The current literature of the time abounds in details of the state of these fashionable heads, which cannot now be alluded to, but was satirized or seriously lamented in the plainest language, but of course without effect, until the polite world got tired of the inconvenient, unhealthy, and ugly fashion. A cap of monstrous proportion was invented to cover the whole mass, and its top-heavy character will be best understood from the engraving here copied from a print dated 1776. "When ladies ventured out, it could scarcely be on a windy day; but, for their convenience, a titled lady at Bath (then the very focus of fashion) invented a headcovering, thus described in the Universal Magazine of 1765 :—


source: The St. James's magazine, Volume 3

Rant~ Elizabeth Lynn Linton, 1884

Elizabeth Lynn Linton dishes on fashion in this essay, "The Follies of Fashion", from a book of essays, "Ourselves". I've just cut out some juicy bits, the book is in the internet archive if you'd care to dive in. One thing that strikes me in reading this old literature is that the "voices" are the same as in the current time. People adopt fashions, other people make fun of, or are aghast at the imbeciles that could possibly consider wearing such a thing.

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There was certainly no shortage of material to criticize in the 19th century. Hoop skirts, crinolines, corsets, long skirts that trailed in the mud, impossibly intricate coiffures that required a lot of time and hopefully assistance in order to construct. And ACCESSORIES. Jewels, feathers, ribbons, hair-pads, false hair  and human hair-pieces.  Ridiculous hats and bonnets perched atop these architecturally complicated hair-towers.

And what, pray tell, is that perching atop Ms. Linton's head? And are her eyes bulging because of that constricting neckline? Or are those PIERCING eyes???? Eyes that see the foibles of women, soooo clearly?

When I look at the old fashion illustrations of these costumes, they look so charming. Imagine, though, the reality of lacing yourself into a corset, navigating crowded rooms in a hoop-skirt, or sitting for hours while your hair is attended to(or, horrors, attempting to do your hair, yourself)... 

Excerpts from "The Follies of Fashion":

"Of all our follies none perhaps are so great as those which we commit in the name of Fashion. Fashion is the sorceress to whose spell we all succumb, the tyrant whose will not one of us dares dispute, the ignis fatuus whose wavering flame we follow, indifferent to the nature of the ground through which we are led. Bog or brake—what does it matter? so long as we go precisely as we are told, and obey that mysterious and capricious leader of ours, we are all right; and if we do fall into odd places meanwhile, that is not our own fault but rather the misfortune of the times. Fashion while young is never in fault— when old you may laugh at her as much as you please; but while new and vigorous all that she does is perfect, and if you, as an individual, stand out against her and find her ways unpleasant, the blame lies with you and not with the lawgiver."

"Perhaps I am wrong in saying that not one of us dares dispute this tyrant, this great Dalai Lama of the work-room and the manufactory; for every now and then we do meet with recusants who refuse to take on themselves the yoke of fashion, and who walk in unfettered freedom, bound by no silken ties and lured by no false lights of pretended beauty. But unfortunately they are generally women who fling off the bonds of real beauty as well as the false ones of fashion, and who appear as frightful in their own originality as they would have been under the most servile imitation; women who, because they will not be slaves to conformity make themselves slaves to ugliness, and find no mean between the two opposite poles of extravagance in obedience or eccentricity in dissent. These were the women who, when all the female world went about like huge bells encased in a swelling scaffolding of steel and whalebone, walked defiantly among their structured sisters with not so much as a pennyworth of starch in their skimpy skirts, nor an inch-wide frill to faintly represent the foam of flounce then in vogue; and these are the women whor now that fashion has veered all the way round and draped herself in clinging skirts and lanky lines, still keep to the crinoline of ten years ago and sweep their  harsh way among us—nuisances for whose disagreeable unloveliness there is not even the questionable excuse of conformity."

"They are women who begin a fashion just as it is dying out, so that they are always in opposition, but no more sensible than their neighbours; or they are women without the power to unite sense and beauty, and even when they are intrinsically rational—as in the days when they withstood the craze of cages and kept their petticoats undistended—are so uncompromisingly ugly in their attire, so ungraceful, so careless of what we mean by "appearances," that so far from helping their sisters to better things by offering them a beautiful model or a wise one, they throw them yet farther into the extreme of the prevailing folly from very dread of becoming like to anything so ridiculous."

"If this section of the strong-minded who are not afraid of being recusants, would devise some costume that should unite artistic grace and work-a-day convenience, something as useful and not so hideous as the Bloomer costume say, and not so defiant of present fashions, they might do a good work in their generation, and effect the most valuable of all secondclass reforms. But they only strengthen the hands of the enemy while they are merely oppositionists who cannot offer anything absolutely better than the fashions they decry..."

"The worst of it all was that every now and then some beautiful and graceful and simple fashion was struck out that one would have liked to see perpetuated, but that died away in a very few years, to be replaced by something as monstrous as this had been befitting. There was the justaucorps, which we see in the pictures of (I think) Eleanor of Provence: that sleeveless, well-adjusted but not strained kind of surcoat which we have been lately somewhat imitating. This is an article of dress that affords all manner of pretty opportunities; but it went out; and we had in its stead, after a long succession of experiments in ugliness— each more advanced than the last—the steel corset of Catherine de Medicis and our own Elizabeth, the padded hips and rigid waist accompanying, and the whole art of the Mesdames Elises of the period thrown into making a woman look as much like a wooden wasp as it was possible for bone and buckram to achieve. We have not got past that folly even yet. Only the other day a book was published which gravely —by no means jokingly or satirically—first of all asserted that the creation of a small waist by means of tight lacing, or its semblance by the artful aid of hoops and frills, &c, has been the end and aim of all fashion; and then went on to advocate this creation as the righteous end and aim of fashion, and as the one thing which women, and specially unmarried women, should set their energies to attain, no matter through what suffering; and which the author assures us to be in nowise hurtful to the health, while it is undeniably beautiful (?) to the eye."

"That the ribs are a protecting case within which are packed away certain tender and important organs —that it is vitally necessary those organs should have full space for the exercise of their functions, that they should not be pressed on, nor hampered, nor in any way impeded—seem physiological facts utterly unknown to the person who wrote that remarkable book while as for such a prosaic law as proportion, what has that to do with the integral beauty of a waist thirteen inches round ?—to which worse than foolish dimensions some young ladies, by dint of present personal torture and future certain disease, have at last contracted their bony case of ribs. A large, flat, spreading waist is as ugly as anything else which is large and flat and spreading, when it ought to be small, compact, and trim; but a wasp-like waist, with huge shoulders above and full hips below, is even more ugly. The one at least represents freedom, and such ease and health as come from freedom; the other is. eloquent of pain, of contraction, and of disease."

"But the writer was true in his premises if false in his conclusions—the meaning of farthingales and crinolines and hoops and modernized paniers, and all the other queer structures in steel, buckram, or lighterpuff in which we women have at various times invested our persons, is to create, by the shadows and contrast afforded by excessive expansion, the semblance when we have not the reality of a small waist. One can understand physiologically and sentimentally the beauty of a round, small waist in a young unmarried girl, when not carried to extremes and when kept in just proportion to the rest of the figure; but what one cannot understand is, why women of riper years and matronly condition, should take so much trouble to make themselves unsatisfactory travesties of maidenhood; and why they cannot utilize the special beauties of their own condition, and be content with the richer and fuller graces belonging to them. Girls do not set the fashions. They may and do exaggerate them, because there is very little else to distinguish one girl from another in the crowd, and because they are silly; but it is the woman who is just beginning to be on the wane, la fcmmc firesqiic passee, who wants to look still youthful and girlish, from whom proceed, nine-tenths of the devices to conceal the figure and delude die eye. The large manufacturers and wholesale millinery establishments of course decide beforehand what are to be the patterns of the season; but in the smaller details it is the married woman—who, moreover, bears the purse and possesses the social influence—who sets her wits to approximate herself to the young girl; and this is best done by such fashions as most conceal distinctions and level inequalities of graces; as in this very matter of the small waist, which is to be created in appearance when it does not exist in reality. It is for the advantage of a nicely-made girl to appear in simple costume. Her trim proportions, and the pretty run of her figure, want only leave to appear as nature has given them to her; but when she and the rotund matron dress in the same masquerading expanse of crinoline and furbelow, the girl loses all distinctive charm and the matron alone gains by the similitude."

"At present we have made ourselves only ridiculous, we are not inconvenient to our neighbours by the particular furbelow of the day. If we think the "Grecian bend" a graceful kind of thing, and that yards of material puffed out at the back make us more lovely in the eyes of men, by all means let us go on with the "bend" and the puff till we get tired of them. It does not much signify to what we shall change; it is so sure to be something both intrinsically ugly and absurd. All we can hope for is, that our tyrant may not be pleased to put on us an attire which shall be inconvenient to others as well as to ourselves, and that by degrees a little common sense may be allowed to filter into her councils, so that she may be induced to consider what is beauty in the abstract, rather than what milliners and dressmakers call "fit for any lady to wear."

"Our greatest folly at the present moment however, is not the puff we call, I believe, paniers, but the long trains which we delight in dragging after us for a yar i or so, and which make taking down to dinner, or walking across a room a trial of nerves, temper, an. I agility to all concerned. "It looks so graceful!" we say complacently, when remonstrated with. So we sacrifice convenience, cleanliness, and the good temper of the men to maintain a childish, and worse than childish fashion, because "it looks so graceful" to trail behind us silken trains not half so beautiful as a peacock's tail, nor so dignified. It seems to me we might do something better than fall below a two-legged fowl in our imitative art of personal decoration."

"Next of importance to the creation of a small waist, fashion has always held the disposition of the hair and the dressing of the head. And here again we come to those queer exaggerations in which we women so unaccountably take pleasure. Only a few generations ago, and our heads were literally built up like so much mason-work. Buckram, pomatum, powder, flowers, laces, and jewels, all were employed in the disfiguring of our hair—one of the most beautiful things which nature has given to woman; and the result was an amount of hideousness that seems to us now absolutely incomprehensible, and a state of dirt and horrible nastiness even more incomprehensible. Ladies then went from London to York, a three days journey, with their hair dressed by a town hairdresser, all ready for the county ball. They slept by the way propped up by pillows ; with their heads supported on the backs of chairs that the hideous structure should not be disarranged. This was their pride, and the sacrifice they made to fashion and appearance; for which they had their reward in the wonder of the beaux and the envy of the belles of the provinces, who could not sufficiently admire what the one never saw surpassed and the other could not hope to compass. Once a month their heads were opened, cleansed, and renewed; for which we have the authority of the Spectator; and it does not require a very vivid imagination to enable us to picture what they were like when they were opened. I am old enough to remember the huge bows, trained over wired foundations, that my elder sisters wore on the tops of their heads some forty years ago; and great was the labour and detestable was the result thereof. Then we had those cascades of corkscrew ringlets which cost so much pains to make, and which the damp brought out into ignominious lengths called by the irreverent, tallow-candles. After these we had a very pretty and simple fashion of braid that did not last long; and then we came to the reign of the chignon—and now to its offshoot, the big bird's-nest on the very crown of the head, with the fringe of short hair about the face, curled or straight But whatever type we adopt—whether that of the secretary bird, or of any other animal which has all its feathers or fur falling backwards, or that of the crested cockatoo, the bison, or the other beasts which have bristling frontlets —we carry our imitation to extremes, and caricature the lower creature whose leading lines we reproduce. "

"We cannot be content unless we caricature. No sooner do we get hold -of a tolerably pretty fashion than we set to work to torture it (and ourselves) into the extreme of ugliness and folly—as now with our hair; for though not so dirty, our heads are almost as absurdly dressed as they were in Queen Anne's time; and certainly the things we wear on them are more absurd. What can we say of the taste which coils a length of fur round and round as a cap, and then finishes off with a stuffed head—fox or what not—with glass eyes made as like to nature as is possible? Our girls dye their hair to the right shade of tawny brown, then perch on the top a thing they call a hat, which is this beast's head and (presumably) its body, with the sharp muzzle and staring eyes right in front. as if about to leap off on to the first passer-by. And this is the taste of the nineteenth century in the matter of one form of head-gear."

"Only within the last seven years how have fashions changed! Seven years ago we had the spoon-bonnet which disconcerted all our previous instinctive measurements, and led to endless discomfort in the way of knocking our spoons against the roofs of carriages and the like; now we have vanishing trifles of lace just bound round the fore-part of the head, without real fastenings properly so called, and leaving the whole face, nape, ears, and throat unprotected. It has takers just seven years to pass from spoons to the modern cap-bonnet—from enormous crinolines, yards wide, to the present lank skirts, and Japanese or ghost-like wreaths of trains eddying round the feet. Or we havelong French-formed trains much bedecked, which spread out as we walk like a peacock's tail, as I said, and are more inconvenient. The prettiest fashion, and the wisest, that we have inaugurated for a long while is the short walking costume; which it is to be hoped will become the fashion for rooms as well as fox streets. But there is little chance of that—it is too rational, too pretty, and too simple."

"But what can we say of the fashion which dyes the hair, paints the cheeks, blackens the eyelids with antimony to make the orbit look larger and the lashes longer, or that expands the pupils with belladonna, no matter at what cost of complexion or future eyesight?" 

"... But fashion so willed it; and neither mother nor daughter had strength to resist her impalpable but absolute decrees. We all obey her; young and old alike: those who should keep their beauties sacred, and those who have none to show—the delicate who have to be kept alive by art and care—the lean who are too ugly for any one to find pleasure in the contemplation of their angles—the wrinkled, and the gross—we all parade ourselves in evening society without more disguise than that which a bit of gauze or lace can give; and only very few of us use that; for even when well on into tire fifties, we do not believe that anything is to be gained by concealment. As to the extent to which we cut down our boddices, that is a matter too patent and too painful to be discussed. It is a race among us who shall wear the dress the lowest, and show the largest expanse of shoulder. And yet we mean no harm: we mean only to be fashionable."

Strange Beauty~ Elisabeth, Empress of Austria

Empress Elisabeth of Austria ( December 24, 1837 –  September 10, 1898) was renowned for her beauty and conflicting reports abound as to the source of that beauty. She was an avid horsewoman and took much exercise in the open air, it has been reported that she walked as much as 15 miles in a day. She also practiced "tight-lacing" with corsets...


 It has also been reported that she slept with slices of raw veal upon her face and forbade her hairdresser to pull a single hair. 


She had a lithe, graceful figure, luxurious chestnut hair and a flawless complexion. She was certainly endowed by nature and she also took great pains to preserve that beauty. She was successful, to a point. The outdoor exercise that undoubtedly contributed to her graceful figure also roughened and tanned her delicate complexion to the point that she would not sit for any more portraits after the age of 32. This is something that I have read of time and time again in regards to historical beauties~ that beauty did not last past the age of 30 or thereabouts. Ninon de L'Enclos is a notable exception to this observation.


Of course, when we discuss the inevitability of fading beauty, we are discussing the inevitability of fading youth... 

Exercise~

"It is hardly credible that Francis Joseph distinctly allowed the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary to spend many hours of the day in the Riding School, and to associate with jockeys and professional riders on an equal footing, and it is said that a cavalry officer once observed to the Emperor that he could not conceive how he could permit this wild riding and hunting.

"Ah, my young friend," replied the Emperor, "you do not yet understand women ; they do what they like, without asking our permission."

Those who have seen the Empress on horseback are unanimous that she presented a remarkably pretty picture. She nearly always wore a dark blue habit trimmed with fur that fitted her slender figure to perfection, a low hat and thick gloves. She did not care for a flower or ribbon, and the only thing that could be considered superfluous in her costume was a black fan, which she either held in her hand, or kept strapped to her saddle. But she frequently used it, and those who did not know her, thought it was to protect her beautiful complexion; but those who understood her more perfectly were well aware that it was a protection against painters and photographers, who were an annoyance to her, and continually on her track in order to take her likeness.


"I strongly object to being photographed," she used to say, "for every single time that I have permitted it, some misfortune has happened to me.


The Viennese considered her passion for horseexercise extravagant, and called her in derision "the circus-rider," but the Hungarians, who admired her on horseback, surnamed her "the Queen of the Amazons." She was well aware that her devotion to riding was displeasing to many, but she had been fond of it from a child, and as her long continued illness had forced her physician to debar her from it for some years, she resumed it with perfect indifference to hostile criticism.


She loved her horses and never failed to have carrots and sugar in her pocket for their enjoyment, while each morning found her in the stable to pat them, see that they were well groomed, or on occasion, to brush and rub a favourite steed with her own hands.


She had a room at Schonbruun, the walls of which were simply covered with pictures of horses. "Look," she said to her Greek reader, to whom she was showing this room, "I have lost all these friends; many of them have met their death for me, which no human being would ever do. Men would prefer to kill me!"


It gave her intense pleasure to rush through the Austrian woods, or over the Hungarian plains on horseback, but her motive was also to try and conquer the gloomy moods that were beginning to overcloud her mind. There were relations, both on her father's and on her mother's side, who had drifted steadily through life, nearer and nearer to the abyss of madness, and some of the members of her family were even then on that dismal border-land between the dusk of a fixed idea and the night of lunacy. As years went by, she noticed more and more frequently that her nervous system exhibited several of the symptoms of the hereditary complaint, and there is hardly a doubt that during the last twenty years of her life she was conscious of the germs of that mental malady peculiar to the members of the Bavarian Royal house.


She sought for physical exertion to dispel her gloomy forebodings and rode at a gallop for miles in the twilight of early dawn, or in the star-light night, mainly to escape from people and surroundings that wearied and worried her. Or she would spend half-days on horseback, and rush like a stormy wind past the peaceful labourers who stood and gazed at her. These rides numbed her fears, and quieted her over-wrought nerves. Wind or rain, warmth or cold had no meaning for her, and again and again she would remain in the saddle wet through, but no harm came of it. She seemed to be absolutely proof against physical discomfort or inconvenience during these excursions, and never drew rein till her horse was literally quivering with exhaustion."


source: "Elizabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary" , By Clara Tschudi


That Glorious Hair~

"Neither poet nor painter could do justice to her loveliness; not that her features were strictly classical, but the expression of her countenance, the index to the purity and innocence of her soul, made her so beautiful that to see her was to love her. She was then about fifteen, as untainted by worldly contact as the pure lilies which she loved to gather in the parks of her ancestral home, Schloss Passenhofen, on the banks of Lake Traun. Like an artless child, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, she flitted back and forth, seemingly unconscious of the royal visitors, choosing her own partners, and entirely absorbed with the innocent pleasure of the moment.


Two years later, after she had been wooed and won, and her imperial suitor had returned to Munich for the espousals, I saw the ardent young lovers, for lovers they certainly were, at the court ball given in their honor. They were like happy children on a holiday, for "the world is full of beauty when the heart is full of love." The Emperor was then in his twenty-fourth year, and the Princess Elizabeth was seventeen, though she looked even younger. She had lost none of her peerless beauty, which needed not the aid of any ornament. Her dress was of white silk, perfectly plain, simply covered with tulle, which suited her sylph-like figure...



One change I noticed: her beautiful blonde hair was now rolled back from her chiselled forehead and confined in a graceful knot, from which a white rose-bud hung carelessly, just caught by a diamond brooch, or half coronet, the gift of her imperial fiance'. This style of wearing the hair became the rage in Munich and Vienna, but no one could imitate it; the princess was her own coiffeuse; the style in its simplicity was peculiar to herself, and becoming only to the angelic face which it surrounded as a halo of light...


...The rigid etiquette of the Austrian court, established by Joseph II., the unworthy son of the magnanimous Maria Theresa, was a crushing weight upon the heart of the young Empress, and only the love which she bore to Franz Joseph enabled her to endure the surveillance and incessant reprimands of her imperial and imperious mother-in-law. Accustcmed to the freedom of a bird in the air, or the graceful gazelle in the forest, the empty and heartless ceremonies of the court wellnigh broke her spirit. Compelled to sit for hours under the hands of the coiffeuse, who knew not her simple art, the young Empress often rushed forth, impetuously exclaiming: "I will dress my own hair; here they know nothing but idle vanity "; and suiting the action to the word, in one moment the graceful coiffure was completed; but not before she heard the oftrepeated words: "Does such conduct become the Empress of Austria? It belongs rather to a poor country girl."

source: "Personal Reminiscences of the Empress Elizabeth", by D. S. Beni, Catholic world, Volume 68, By Paulist Fathers

"The only trait of vanity which I ever noticed in Empress Elizabeth was the pride she took in her magnificent chestnut hair, which fell below her knees. She used to have it dressed for hours every day, whilst the "reader," Mile. F., read to her English, French or Hungarian novels. Her majesty was particularly anxious that the dressers who brushed her long tresses should avoid pulling out a single hair. This, of course, was an impossibility, and the unfortunate maid concealed carefully in the pocket of her apron any hair which became entangled in the brush. One day the empress, happening to glance into the looking-glass, caught sight of the maid concealing a small roll of hair in the above-described fashion. Jumping from her rocking chair, her majesty clutched her attendant by the wrist and angrily exclaimed, "I have caught you at last; you are ruining my hair." With a presence of mind which would have done honor to an expert diplomat, the maid replied unhesitatingly, "I implore your majesty to forgive me. It never happened before. I only wished to have a few of my sovereign's hairs to put into the locket which my little girl wears around her neck as a talisman." Whether the empress believed or not this clever invention, I do not know, but, shrugging her shapely shoulders, she resumed her seat, laughing merrily; and the next day she presented her maid with a locket enriched with diamonds, saying, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "I think this is the kind of talisman your little daughter deserves for having such a clever mother.""—One of the Ladies of the Court, Harper's Magazine, June, 1893.

source: "Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great",  By Charles Anthony Shriner

"Once a month Elizabeth's heavy chestnut tresses were washed with raw egg and brandy and afterwards rinsed with some "disinfectant," as she termed it. When the actual washing was over the empress put on a long waterproof silk wrapper and walked up and down until the hair was dry. The woman who acted as her coiffeuse was hardly ever seen without gloves, which she even wore during the night; her nails were cut close; rings were forbidden her; the sleeves of her white gown were quite short; and it may be almost truthfully asserted that the hair of Aunt Cissy's head were all numbered. . . ." —Countess Marie Lariscu, "My Past," copyright, G. P. Putnam's Sons.

source: "Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great",  By Charles Anthony Shriner

Complexion~

"Elizabeth was not a believer in any special face treatment. Sometimes she only used a simple toilet cream; occasionally at night she wore a kind of mask "lined" inside with raw veal; and in the strawberry season she smeared her face and neck with the crushed fruit. The empress took warm baths of olive oil, which she believed helped to preserve the suppleness of her figure, but on one occasion the oil was nearly boiling and she narrowly escaped the horrible death associated with many Christian martyrs. She often slept with wet towels round her waist in order to keep its proportion slender, and drank a horrible decoction composed of the whites of five or six eggs mixed with salt for the same purpose. . . . Elizabeth slept on a plain iron bedstead, which she took with her wherever she went. She scorned pillows and lay quite flat, probably because she had been told by some one that it was beneficial to her beauty."—Countess Mahie Lariscu, "My Past," copyright, G. P. Putnam's Sons.

"From him, T. Paoli we learn that the empress bathed daily in distilled water, and took only one biscuit with her tea at breakfast, and refreshed herself later in the morning "with meat juice extracted daily from several pounds of fillet of beef by means of a special apparatus which she always carried with her," and dined off iced milk, raw eggs and a glass of Tokay. M. Paoli also speaks of her long walks, for these, of course, were occasions when the burden of his responsibility weighed heavily upon him. Elizabeth often walked as much as fifteen or twenty miles a day, with no one but her "Greek reader"—some student as a rule of the University of Athens—in attendance. His function was not only to read Greek, but also to carry the empress's spare skirt. She walked, clad in "a black serge gown of so simple a character that no well-to-do tradeswoman would care to be seen in it"; and she often changed her skirt in the midst of her perambulations, behind trees, or any other screen which the landscape afforded, while the reader dutifully looked the other way. Sometimes too she perambulated the streets of Paris with equal recklessness. Once, M. Paoli recalls, she went to see Notre Dame by moonlight and insisted upon being taken afterwards to eat onion soup at a cafe.—Francis Grirble, "The Life of the Emperor Francis Joseph."

"The empress not only smokes from fifty to sixty Turkish cigarettes a day, but during the course of the evening she also smokes several terribly strong cigars. This perhaps somewhat unfeminine pastime acts as a sedative to her majesty's nervous temperament and had become almost indispensable to her. In spite of all the doctors say to the contrary, this habit has not impaired the pearlywhiteness of her lovely teeth."—One of the Ladies of her Court, Harper's Magazine, June, 1893.

source: "Wit, Wisdom and Foibles of the Great",  By Charles Anthony Shriner

The Mysterious Case of the Wandering Bun

aka the rotating hair-do. I think that this is a case of hair CHANGING ITSELF!!! From a 1943 issue of Woman's Day Magazine. I suppose that to get good photos I should flatten these pages. I don't want to ruin the mag, though. "She Does It Herself" !! Inspiring, yes?

Face Patches

Face patches became the height of fashion among the Ladies of the Court of England in the 17th and 18th centuries. These patches were made of black velvet or taffeta and patch boxes were carried so that ladies could replace fallen patches.  They were first used to cover small imperfections, such as pock marks or pimples but then, like any fad, they took on a life of their own. Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" was the ideal of fair-haired, fair skinned beauty of the time and  rumor had it that Venus was born with a natural beauty spot on her cheek and that to have such a mark served to make one more beautiful....

Trends in fashion and beauty are cyclical. Will this fashion come around again? Although odd, it seems relatively benign compared to some of the procedures and affectations of current times...
                                                      
                                                   from "The Book of Days",  1832:

an early wood-cut

~The earliest mention of the adoption of patching by the ladies of England, occurs in Bulwer's Artificial Changeling (1653). "Our ladies," he complains, "have lately entertained a vain custom of spotting their faces, out of an affectation of a mole, to set olf their beauty, such as Venus had; and it is well if one black patch serves to make their faces remarkable, for some fill their visages full of them, varied unto all manner of shapes and figures."


~Samuel Pepys has duly recorded his wife's first appearance in patches, which seems to have taken place without nis concurrence, as three months afterwards he makes an entry in his Diary: 'My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being the first time I had given her leave to wear a black patch.' And a week or two later, he declares that his wife, with two or three patches, looked far handsomer than the Princess Henrietta. Lady Castlemaine, whose word was law, decreed that patches could not be worn with mourning; but they seem to have been held proper on all other occasions, being worn in the afternoon at the theatre, in the parks in the evening, and in the drawing-room at night. Puritanical satirists, of course, did not leave the fair patchers unmolested. One Smith printed An Invective against Black Spotted Faces, in which he warned them—

an ideal beauty of the day...

"Hellgate is open day and night                       
 To such as in black spots delight. 
 If pride their faces spotted make, 
 For pride then hell their souls will take. 
 If folly be the cause of it, 
 Let simple fools then learn more wit. 
 Black spots and patches on the face 
 To sober women bring disgrace. 
 Lewd harlots by such spots are known, 
 Let harlots then enjoy their own."

Fashion, however, as usual, was proof against the assaults of rhyme or reason, and spite of both, the ladies continued to cover their faces with black spots. When party-feeling ran high in the days of Anne, we have it on  authority, that politically-minded dames used their patches as party symbols: the Whigs patching on the right, and the Tories on the left side of their faces, while those who were neutral, decorated both cheeks. 'The censorious say that the men whose hearts are aimed at, are very often the occasion that one part of the face is thus dishonoured and lies under a kind of disgrace, while the other is so much set-off and adorned by the owner; and that the patches turn to the right or to the left according to the principles of the man who is most in favour. But whatever may be the motives of a few fantastic coquettes, who do not patch for the public good so much as for their own private advantage, it is certain that there are several women of honour who patch out of principle, and with an eye to the interests of their country. Nay, I am informed that some of them adhere so steadfastly to their party, and are so far from sacrificing their zeal for the public to their passion for any particular person, that in a late draught of marriage-articles, a lady has stipulated with ner husband that whatever his opinions are, she shall be at liberty to patch on which side she pleases.'

This was written in 1711, and in 1754 the patch was not only still in existence, but threatening to overwhelm the female face altogether. A writer in the World for that year says: 'Though I have seen with patience the cap diminishing to the size of a patch, I have not with the same unconcern observed the patch enlarging itself to the size of a cap. It is with great sorrow that I already see it in possession of that beautiful mass of blue which borders upon the eye. Should it increase on the side of that exquisite feature, what an eclipse have we to dread! out surely it is to be hoped the ladies will not give up that place to a plaster, which the brightest jewel in the universe would want lustre to supply. . . . All young ladies, who find it difficult to wean themselves from patches all at once, shall be allowed to wear them in whatever number, Bize, or figure they please, on such parts of the body as are, or should be, most covered from sight And any lady who prefers the simplicity of euch ornaments to the glare of her jewels, shall, upon disposing of the said jewels for the benefit of the foundling or any other hospital, be permitted to wear as many patches on her face as she has contributed hundreds of pounds to so laudable a benefaction, and so the public be benefited, and patches, though not ornamental, be honourable to Bee.'

And from "The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist", 1880

"...we may well fancy that the first "patches" would be bits of " court plaster," the necessary appliances to a pimpled or " broken out " face. The ladies themselves, however, with their usual and highly commendable ingenuity, asserted that as Venus herself had a mole on her cheek, which added a fresh charm to her beauty, they wore, as lineal descendants of her loveliness, these patches as artificial beauty-spots...

...Thus, if in the first instance, a pimple or other disfigurement appearing on the face was, of necessity, covered with a small plaster—possibly cut into an ornamental form for appearance sake—and this occurred with some "highborn dame " or leader of ton, the fashion would at once be " set" and imitators would increase and multiply in every rank of society, each outdoing another in novelty, form, number, and position of the so-called beauty-spots...


...Prefixed to a curious work, called "A Wonders of Wonders, or a Metamorphosis of Fair Faces into Foul Visages; an invective against black-spotted faces," written in the reign of James the First, by one R. Smith, is a short poem " On Painted and Spotted Faces," in which, alluding to the shapes of the patches, the following lines occur :—

the wearing of patches was not limited to the Ladies...

"And yet the figures emblematic are,               
Which our she wantons so delight to weare. 
The Coach and Horses with the hurrying wheels, 
Show both their giddy brains and gadding heels; 
The Cross and Crosslets in one face combined, 
Demonstrate the cross humours of their mind; 
The Bra's of the bowls doth let us see, 
They'll play at rubbers, and the mistresse bo; 
The Rings do in them the black art display, 
That spirits in their circles raise and lay; 
But, oh ! the sable Starrs that you descry 
Benights their day, and speaks the darkened sky. 
The several Moons that in their faces range, 
Eclipse proud Proteus in his various change; 
The long slash and the short denote the skars, 
Their skirmishes have gaind in Cupid's wars. 
For those, that into patches clip the Crown, 
"f is time to take such pride and treason down. 



...from " The Burse of Reformation" (and "Wit Restored"), 1658, :

Heer patches are of every art 
  For pimples and for searrs; 
Heer's all the wandring planett signes, 


  And some o' th' fixed starrs, 
Already gumm'd, to make them stick, 


  They need no other sky, 
Nor starrs, for Lilly for to vew, 
  To tell your fortunes by. 


in "Beauties' Warning-piece, or Advice to the Fair", 1680

"But fair one know your glass is run, 
Your time is short, your thread is spun, 
Your spotted face, and rich attire 
Is fuell for eternal fire. "


from "A True Satire " —

"Come you Ladies that do wear 
More Fashions than Sundays in the Year: 
With your Locks, Ribbond-knots, and silk Roses; 
With your Spots on your face and your noses 
Your bare breasts and your back, discover what you lack, 
          Come along, come along, I must lash you. "


*gasp* Lashing for a fashion faux-pas? Seems a mite severe....

"The Birth of Venus", Botticelli