Martyrs of Fashion, 1902

Martyrs of Fashion- three ideals of headdresses

source: "The Strand" Magazine, Volume 24, 1902

~Some articles are just too good! This is the entire article, with original illustrations. I am SO curious as to the identity of the actress alluded to in the article, but I can't find anything beyond this article. Also, the methods/practices described here are benign compared to those of today. Much more "false" looking and not without their dangers, but not so invasive.


The last sentence of the article~ "They have committed the fault of passing the boundary at which care of the person ceases to be justifiable, and are after all much less attractive than a healthy milkmaid." -is interesting. Milkmaids were envied for their clear, smooth complexions... and the reason that they had such clear, smooth skin is because they caught a weaker variation of smallpox from cows, thereby escaping the disfiguring effects of smallpox...the resultant pock-marks.


Lots of tid-bits here. Enjoy!

To take care of her person, to correct certain imperfections which disfigure a pretty face, to dress with taste, to obey the exigencies of fashion is, for a woman, not only a permissible coquetry, but almost a conventional duty. At the same time, if to that extent the art of the toilette is quite legitimate, as much cannot be said for the means taken by some women to give themselves the appearance of a beauty denied to them by Nature. To what learned, complicated, and strange recipes they have recourse, to what sufferings they subject themselves light-heartedly, is hardly believable; and beyond question the price paid is a very heavy one for the acquisition of a fictitious beauty—which deceives nobody.

Is it not the dream of almost all women to be beautiful and to remain young? And who thinks of reproaching them for it? What moralist would be so severe as to blame them? To take particular care of her toilette, to select what adornments may assist in giving an agreeable expression to her visage, and to correct whatever faults it may have—nothing is less blamable, nothing is more natural; only the question here is one of extent, a matter of degree. By the side of this wholly allowable coquetry there is another, at which we cannot refrain from smiling, unless we are inclined to feel pity for those who are under its influence: it consists in the complete substitution of artifice for Nature in carrying out a labour of vanity and falsehood which, when all is done, misses its end, since the effect it produces is of the most repugnant kind.

To fashion or cultivate her beauty, then, becomes an art in which all the arts are employed, a science to which all the sciences lend their aid—in which chemistry and medicine, surgery and painting, physics, statuary, and mineralogy all have parts to play.

But it is not only time, trouble, and money that have to be paid in such a case; patience, resignation, and endurance are also demanded. Who is there who does not know the sufferings to which some women will condemn themselves, duped by a mirage of beauty? Who does not know to what lengths they will carry the cruelties of self-martyrdom? Let us call up this spectacle, let us look upon this self-inflicted torture of coquetry pushed to mania, and see how much strength of will may be put at the service of frivolity.

The first merit which calls admiring attention to a woman, and has at all times been celebrated by the poets, is freshness of complexion. The women of Corinth took a bath of perfumed olive oil for two hours daily. In Rome the vapour-bath, followed by douches and massage, occupied the mornings of elegant ladies. Nero's wife, the Empress Poppsea, invented baths of asses' milk, in which she indulged twice a day. Flocks of several hundred asses followed the Court wherever it went, to insure the toilette of the Empress.

Under the Directory Madame Tallien tried baths of crushed strawberries and raspberries. But what is the sort of bath that has not been contrived? Baths of grape and olive skins, of Bordeaux wine, and of champagne have been used. A French doctor recommended baths of fresh blood, and in hundreds of towns bathing-places were provided in the public slaughter-houses. Other votaries of fashion were advised to bury themselves inside the bodies of dead animals, and even in manure-heaps. Modern science has replaced these strange prescriptions by baths of glycerine, and by ammomacal, electric, and chemical baths.

But even those revolting expedients for giving a beautiful hue to the skin were, perhaps, less matters of torture than the wearing through the night of masks, sometimes rigid, sometimes repulsive. In Rome the usage of the mask was so general that it was called the domestic, or husband's, mask. It was fabricated by special slaves every evening, with a paste made of bean flour, or with a mucilaginous product found in the nests of certain sea-birds; or, again, with the sweat of lambs.

In France the domestic mask was in use down to the seventeenth century. We owe to Henry III., who wore it, the recipe for a mask made of flour and white of eggs. This composition hardened on the face during the night, and was softened in the morning with a lotion of chervil. Haricot bean flour, fresh cream, honey, and olive oil entered into the preparation of these masks, which moulded themselves to the features. The chroniclers have left many ironical descriptions of these "stone faces," in which the features of these "elegants" were encased at nightfall, to be broken on the return of daylight and give to view—at least for a few hours—a complexion intact and youthful.

Let us not, however, too strongly accuse of fantasies the "elegants" of other days, with their "stone faces." In the dressingroom of some voluntary victim of coquetry in 1902, what are those freshly-cut and carefully-secreted beefsteaks, lividly raw and red, with powder-boxes near them? Presently, with much of mystery, those steaks will be adjusted with minute care by a lady'smaid to the cheeks of her mistress, held in their places with a bandage, and not removed before the next morning. This energetic recipe is said to be a more effective refresher of the complexion than chemical baths or "beauty pills" poisoned with arsenic; at any rate, the application of it demands courage, mystery, and discretion.

But, defiant of masks, fleshly compresses, and arsenical potions, little deformations will show themselves: tiny indiscreet folds of the skin at the corners of the mouth; the epidermis shrinks about the eyes; the surface of the forehead loses its smoothness; the first wrinkle threatens to assert itself. Treatment at once energetic and immediate is called for. Quickly a veritable arsenal is laid under contribution to eradicate this minim of defect. Behold a series of instruments of hardwood and metal, that look like models of garden implements! They are all for use in the processes of " face massage." For one or two hours daily for weeks —it may be for months—a practitioner employs these tools upon the face of his patient with minute care. Each one of the muscles that may act upon the unfortunate pucker in the skin must be massaged in accordance with the importance of the part it plays. Frictions of alcohol and the application of wet bandages terminate each operation. The wrinkle got rid of, partial masks maintain the smoothness of the epidermis so laboriously obtained, until renewed massage becomes requisite a little later on.

"In the Rooms of a 'Parisian Beautifier'"

The electric treatment is more delicate still: it demands the application of a continuous or intermittent current to the extremities of each of the muscles to be fortified. Five or six electrodes may be applied simultaneously to a face that is becoming wrinkled. The intensity of the currents being very weak, innumerable seances are necessary; and, even if not made painful, the operation is, at least, a very tedious one. Add to this that it has to be accompanied by interior medication—that the patient must be fattened or made thinner, according to the state of the epidermis. The suppression of a wrinkle, therefore, may represent three months of assiduous care, of two hours a day, by mechanical or electrical treatment.
So far, only the preservation intact of Nature's work has been dealt with ; now we come upon something more difficult—the remedying of some of its errors, their curtailment or total elimination. Numerous stories have been told to us of savages scalping their prisoners, of their putting them to death at slow fires; it is to similar tortures a woman will unhesitatingly submit herself who has made the distressing discovery that her upper lip is developing a moustache, or is shadowed by a too positive growth of down, or that her cheeks are being invaded by a hairy excrescence. Depilatory operations are always painful—often dangerous.

The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had for this disagreeable growth on the visage the same aversion as ourselves: they tore out both down and hair by very energetic means, extirpating them either with tweezers or by placing on the spot a plaster composed of pitch and quicklime. All the so-called "depilatory" preparations have a caustic base, like the rusma of the Orientals, and burn and injure the skin to a certain depth.

Modern operators practise extraction also. An extremely fine point of hard wood is dipped in crystallizable acetic acid, then applied to the skin beside the hair to be destroyed, which is gently drawn by tweezers. Several applications are made, at intervals of a few minutes; the skin softens, and the point penetrates. The skin then gives way to the least strain put upon it. Whatever the skill of the artist may be, however, the operation is a most painful one —so painful that the extraction of five or six hairs at a sitting is as much as a patient can endure.

modeling brows with electric needle

Electricity may here be introduced. Into the hair itself is inserted a needle of nickelled platinum, through which a conductor causes a current of 4,000 or 5,000 amperes to circulate for a variable period.
Scars often result from this energetic mode of treatment. Besides which, the caprice of electricity, which has its irony, has to be counted with; it may happen that, though it destroys the hair itself, it strengthens the root from which it has sprung and causes a growth of new down, finer and more abundant than ever. The red-hot iron is always the supreme resource—and the supreme torture. This light down was a mere suspicion—a mere shadow; but imagine that a pimple may appear on this epidermis, or perhaps a wart, or streaks and patches of red spread over it! And remember that it is the finest skins that are most exposed to misadventures of that sort' Let surgery come to our assistance; let it cut, slash, tear, and uproot. With a silken thread it strangles excrescences —burns them with acids, or tears away by fragments stains of the skin. This very delicate operation goes on for weeks. Josephine Beauharnais had the patience to allow sixty freckles to be removed from her face with the aid of the knife.

But all these operations appear pale and com monplace by the side of the heroism displayed two years ago by a celebrated actress, to whom truly belongs the martyr's crown. Driven to desperation by seeing her beauty compromised by a series of superficial alterations in her complexion, she decided to have the skin of her face completely changed! She found doctors who undertook the performance of this strange operation, which extended over seven weeks — seven weeks of uninterrupted suffering. All the skin of her face was chemically burned, then detached bit by bit. At the end of two months of suffering the old epidermis had entirely disappeared and been replaced by a skin as rosy, thin, and tender as that of a new-born child! So disconcerting was the aspect of this babylike complexion to a woman of thirty that the desperate actress found herself more ill-looking after the operation than she had thought herself to be before undergoing it, and had to seclude herself for a month to allow her new skin to age a little. At the end of four months, however, the result was perfect; the best friends of the heroic actress all declaring that she was " unrecognisable," so completely was she rejuvenated and transformed!

Seventeenth Century Face Patches

We have suppressed undesirable hairs, blotches, and warts: let us now add to them! We have been at much pains to do all this; and we will now do as much in an opposite direction. It was in the seventeenth century that the use of "patches " was inaugurated. They were cut out of thin black silk or sarcenet, gummed on the back, in the forms of crescents, suns, stars, and comets. They resembled on a face the signs of the Zodiac. They were an indispensable accessory to the play of the features. The placing of them on the temples, near the eyes, and at the corners of the mouth was a special art. A woman of quality always wore from eight to ten, and never went out without her box of patches for the replacing of those that fell off, or for the addition of fresh ones, as occasion might require.

Each one of these patches had a characteristic name: at the corner of the eye, "the impassioned"; in the middle of the cheek, "the gallant"; near the lips, "the coquette"; on a pimple, "the concealer." When she had these all properly placed, a fashionable lady looked as if she had met with some accident to her skin. Even to-day we see ladies who have had little pieces of brown india-rubber inserted under their skin to imitate moles or " beauty-spots."

That is only the beginning. We are now going to witness the whole work of ornamenting a face, of which there is not a feature that cannot be learnedly modified. First, the eye. In antiquity the art of enlarging and darkening the pupil was already known. Ovid says: "The surroundings of the eyes should be slightly darkened, a fine powder blown under the lids to make them appear brilliant and larger, the eyelashes tinted with sepia, the arc of the eyebrows lengthened."

To-day the transformation is not merely superficial. By the absorption of certain poisonous substances—atropine and belladonna, amongst others — a dilation of the pupil is obtained, making it look more expressive and luminous. Around the eye so enlarged some skilful touches with a pencil, prolonging the external opening of the lids; and the application of a flesh-paint, the basis of which is lamp-black, to the lashes, will give a look of brightness to the eyes. Besides all this there needs, for enframing these perfected eyes, well-designed eyebrows and thick lashes. Partial extraction of the hair of the brows and repeated massages may serve to modify their curve.

At the Court of Peter the Great the Russian women of fashion adopted a radical means, that of having their eyebrows entirely extracted, substituting for them a thick layer of black-lead, perfectly designed. Sometimes artificial eyelashes, slightly moistened with collodion, are placed under the natural lashes, which they enlarge. Of course, this work of art must be minutely renewed every day; the effect of belladonna is only momentary; paints become dimmed, and the false eyelids are never of a solidity to be altogether trustworthy.

The face is now to become a veritable palette, on which are all the tones of white, of blue, and of red, to simulate a young and brilliant complexion.

White, called silver or pearl-white, furnishes the first coat and groundwork of the picture. Is it generally known that the elementary essential of all whites is alabaster, pounded and pulverized in special mills mostly installed at Paris? Our "elegants" exhaust every year a quarry of fine marble for the making-up of their faces. The white is spread with a pad of cotton-wool or soft brush, more thickly on the parts where there are wrinkles, or where they may be threatening to appear. The red, chosen from among seventeen shades between rose and vermilion, is laid on lightly in layers and graduated from the top of the cheeks to the beginning of the neck. Finally, with pastels made of powdered talc and indigo, the artist traces in simple lines the course of the veins. One may suppose that the picture is then finished. But what varieties and subtleties enter into this making-up! A visage intended to shine under the rays of powerful lights cannot be treated in the same way as one intended to be seen in the light ot day: there is a red for the evening, a red for the theatre, and another for the town, for the country, for the sea! There is one make-up for fetes and another for simple entertainments!

Even painting has for some years given place to a process highly mysterious and jealously secreted by its practisers: that of enamelling. It substitutes for the outfit of paints a small solid envelope, transparent
and coloured, which covers the face with a coat of enamel. While the most successful make-up of paint cannot long resist exposure to heat, and must be renewed at least once a day, enamel lends the face a brightness that may endure for several weeks. Its inconvenience is the ceramic stiffness, the immobility in which it holds all the features while giving them a brilliant appearance. Its application, moreover, is a long and painful operation. To fix, cold, upon the skin the colouring powers, recourse must be had to acids of a dangerous character. Part of the enamelling must be done in darkness, and two or three days of interrupted treatment are indispensable for rendering the application definitive.

Powdering the Hair

Grave accidents, chronic affections of the skin, often result from enamelling that has been too energetically performed. But the very risk seems to add temptation to this mysterious operation; and who would not brave it to obtain the pearly splendour which turns the visage into a piece of art pottery? Scraped, massaged, polished, electrified, a halo of blue about the large and flashing eyes, the whole face brilliant, this work of art has now to be crowned with a harmoniously-adapted head of hair.

At times when fashion requires that its followers shall have hair of a dark blonde or mahogany colour, what is to be done with black hair but dye it? And what can be done with a thin or failing crop of hair but strengthen it by useful additions, enrich and thicken it?

Dyeing the Hair Venetian Blonde

The Orientals and Egyptians, preferring black hair, obtain it by the use of a lotion composed of Indian ink and rose-water. The young Jewesses used gold-dust to brighten their hair, and it is from them came the fashion of powdered hair. In Rome the "elegants" used dyes of gold colour, greens, and blues. Some of their recipes were very strange. There was one in which the juice of hellebore was mixed with honey and pounded rats' heads. In old France simple powder was at first sufficient; under Charles IX. it was violet, red under Louis XIII. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries white only was used. Mercier, in 1783, protested against the frightful quantity of starch which this fashion caused to be consumed, affirming that cities like London and Paris swallowed up as much meal daily as would have sufficed for the nourishment of ten thousand hungry people.

Modern chemistry lends itself to the most fantastic variations. Who knows what part chance may play in scientific discoveries? It is not less so in regard to capillary art. A doctor visiting a potash manufactory noticed the admirable golden hues of the hair of all the workwomen. A dye with a potash base was immediately combined, producing the Venetian blonde so greatly in vogue of late years. The same effect was formerly attained by exposing the hair to the sun, as shown in the following illustration from an old print. By accident also was the discovery made that the first greying of chestnut hair may be stayed by a lotion of tea. All grades of colour, from black to blonde, are obtained from preparations more or less dangerous, the least peril incurred being the weakening of the growth of hair and the provocation of premature baldness.

The most beautiful heads of natural hair do not equal certain marvellous wigs. In all times women have occasionally worn wigs. "Let us picture to ourselves," wrote M. de Saporta, "Mary Stuart on the scaffold: the executioner raises his axe, decapitates the poor Queen, and, seizing by its long hair the head dripping with blood, cries with all his might: 'God save Queen Elizabeth!' But the distresses of all kinds endured by Mary had stripped her of the blonde tresses of which she had once been so proud: the executioner grasped nothing but a wig, while the head, denuded of its covering, fell noisily on to the floor of the scaffold. For the rest, the Queen of England's head was no better furnished than that of her victim, and her red wig is not less famous."

The eighteenth century must be reached to find that the art of wig-making has attained the highest pitch of perfection—and ridiculousness. Then appeared the headdresses called "opera - boxes," which increased the height of a woman's face to 72m. from the bottom of her chin to the top of her piled-up hair; or those, more extravagant still, called puffs, in which the hair was raised stage above stage, stretched upon frames. In 1774 the Duchesse de Chartres appeared at the opera, her head dressed with a pyramidal puff on which were seen the Due de Beaujolais, her eldest son, in the arms of his nurse, a parrot pecking at a cherry, a little negro, and ciphers made of hairs, even of the Due de Chartres and of Princes.

Though less exacting, our present fashions demand an abundance of hair which has been discreetly augmented by fictitious additions. France alone consumes yearly more than 400,0001b. weight of hair in the making of some 30,000,000 wigs. It is the most costly of artificial beauties, for it has first to be purchased, then kept in order by being die sed daily by the aid of a multitude of products and numerous auxiliaries. The outlay on certain elegant heads of hair would serve to maintain fifteen persons— bald or not.

Now we come to the mouth. On the lips is placed a freshening pigment; on the gums a special rose. The tongue is scraped and rubbed with soft velvet. The teeth are ornamented and fabricated at will. The Annamite women carefully cover their teeth with a salve composed of bone-charcoal, sawdust, and honey; this is an elegance among savages. How much more civilized appears to us the recent fashion of rich American ladies, who, in cavities cut or filed in the hollows of their teeth, set rubies, pearls, diamonds, so that a sparkle underlines every smile of their opened lips?

It is now the turn of the earmodeller. The practice of moulding the ears, which has again become fashionable, is a very old one: the improved shape is effected by training the outer shell of the ear by binding it over pieces of wood of different forms; a cunning ointment is laid over all, and even the least aesthetic ears do not resist this treatment.

And now we come to the nose - maker. Nothing is rarer than a well made, nose; and need it be said of what importance the nose is? To - day noses are remade, refashioned, augmented, the curve of them changed at pleasure. Electric massage, the introduction of cylindrical and expanding sponges into the nostrils, are powerless to effect this prodigy; to achieve it, the skin must be moulded from beneath. The form of the nose chosen, Greek or aquiline, straight or upturned, is carefully moulded in plaster of Paris, with exact dimensions; of this a plaster mould is applied to the nose to be transformed, at the base of which, beneath the skin, a fine syringe charged with pure vaseline is introduced. The process of injection is then carried out, the vaseline penetrates under the skin, which it raises and presses closely against the mould; the pressure on the syringe is maintained until the vaseline injected becomes firm. The mould is then removed, and the nose, recently depressed and ill shapen, exactly resembles the model, only a little discoloured. A trifling daub of red, with some blue veins pencilled, completes this veritable creation, this triumph of modern cosmetics.

 Perhaps you may now declare yourself satisfied with your face. It has cost you quite enough. But, no! Beauty is a matter of proportions. All is lost if you are too big or too little, if you have feet too long, hands too short, a neck too long, a figure too heavy or too thin. What then? You are too tall; your height must be lessened. Your limbs are too long; very well, they must be shortened; too short, they must be lengthened. Let us resign ourselves again heroically to the torture, therefore: an inch has to be taken from the length of our neck, or as much added to it.

To accomplish this there are infallible means. How many processes are there for reducing fat, from the endless band in which women of middle age are swathed to the modern electric corset furnished with invisible batteries! Your limbs are too short? Swedish gymnastics will lengthen and stretch them, by means of apparatus very much resembling some ancient instruments of punishment. The size of a hand cannot be much diminished, but by repeated massages its heavy form may be modified, its fingers better arranged, and their nails freed from flesh. These are objects of great care and energetic treatment. When an ill-formed or ill-placed nail resists the action of polishers and artificial enamel, some "elegants "do not hesitate to submit to have it wholly removed by the burning of its base with acid; the new nail is then, from its birth, treated with infinite care. An actress in London with rare courage is reported to have had the nails on both hands replaced in this way. In Paris alone more than 3,000 specialists are engaged in the fabrication and preservation of beautiful hands.

Is that the end? Not yet. The idea of leaving motion, gesture, attitude, to chance! One must learn to walk, to smile, to execute the least gesture according to a harmonious rhythm. The commonest gesture is taught and repeated that is calculated to increase the effect of the least acquired grace. In fine, when nothing of Nature has been left, the pupil has acquhed the full mastery; the work is complete.

And that work is, veritably, the creation of a new being, artificial and elegant, in whom nothing remains, or at least is visible, of the imperfections imposed by Nature. But are these artificial chefs d'ceuvre worth as much as the sincere and imperfect work of Nature? Painted and enamelled, tinted and moulded to admiration, the heroines of coquetry may at least reproach themselves with having been too successful. They have committed the fault of passing the boundary at which care of the person ceases to be justifiable, and are after all much less attractive than a healthy milkmaid.

removing wrinkles with electric needle

electricity as cure for baldness