Wide hips and thin waist were an ideal in the Victorians era.
In the Victorians Era was very popular to wear a corset. It was a major garment in every women`s closet.
The corsets was thought as a medical necessity n the 1830s. People believed that women was very weak and needed some support to hold her up. Even three or four years old girls were put into the bodices to avoid any abnormal posture in the future. By the time, all corsets got tighter and tighter, even it trasformed stomach bones and organs structure, that made it impossible to draw deep breath, in or out of the corset. Consequently, Victorian women were always fainting and getting haze.
Here you can see the picture, that shows the bones and organs deformations after using corset.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimjV4EdZ6sP33AkmF9oidxV6UzYzIXDGP_BUAew__k6iMxwHlNpwdFVk8-sfnZvW7KJjwNNj4VB7_SirGj3DFZA7NTVDgLLoVC2XDHb8QJovzJPL1SS5XM-giwix7sEen6yBDwaAmcawyG/s320/corseteffects.png
You can see, that the whole intestine slipped into the hips and the ribs got pressed. That affected women's health. Especially when the women was pregnant. They could loose their baby or in the best cases could came out deformed or with some cardiorespiratory problems.
http://www.avictorian.com/fashion/fashion_corset_body1.jpg
In my opinion, ''the corsets idea'' was totally absurd, because it highly affected the women health. It seems as it was a torture for ladies to wear a corset, and their were forced to wear it just because of the 19s trend. Even though, people noticed, that the corset gave a negative results, they still kept wearing it for a quite long time. It is obvious, that the Victorian era's beauty perception was very immature. Consequently , I am very lucky, that I born in 20 century and I do not need to wear a corset.
The makeup in the Victorian era
The makeup started to be used subtly and garishly after 1870. People applied a cosmetics to the skin of a medical nature. They applied pastes, powders and paints. People who had acne, some scars, or similar disfigurements, often wore pastes to smooth their complexions. All these product people bought at local pharmacists shops and through doctors, or for the very rich, ordered form specialist dealers abroad. There also were home made makeup product versions, and even poor people where known to used that.
During 1811-20 and 1803-15, aristocratic and affluent man in England started to move away from tasteful silk outfits, wigs and big amount of face paints and pastes, that had been popular at court, peaking with the macaronis in the late 1700s, and continuing with the fashionable dandies. The wars were the biggest influencing trend to adopt more masculines appearances, so the rich gentlemen competed the “rugged” look.
Beau Brummell (1788-1840) influenced Prince Regent to forsake his wigs and adopt minimal make-up, pantaloons, topcoat and waistcoat. Men continued using pastes as moisturisers to hide blemishes and scars.
After the French Revolution (1789 to 1799), women had already gone to limited use of make-up, rouge being the exception.
Queen Victoria denounced painted faces as vulgar, but it was later in the era with her prolonged mourning period, and not until the 1870s with an economic depression that minimalism became the strictest, only to swing back again in the 1880s with the “professional beauties” and completely abandoned in the “Naughty Ninties.”
Only prostitutes and acresses in 1840s, decorated their appearance with excessive paint and tacky jewellery, however, limited use was the rule for most ladies. The most spoilt dandies in about 1850s were still applying makeup and wearing more expensive adornments. During this time ''Creme Celeste'' became very popular. It was made of mixture of white wax, spermaceti (from an organ inside sperm whale#s head), sweet almond oil and rosewater. This facial paste had moisturising properties, but it also hid blemishes and provided a light smooth complexion. It developed into a common emollient and cosmetic remover, soon known as cold cream.
Eyebrows and eyelashes
Ladies clearly plucked their eyebrows, perhaps trim their eyelashes, and parget castor oil onto their eyelids and lashes.
The powder
The women used rice powder, zinc oxide or the most expensive pearl powder(mixture of chloride of bismuth and French chalk (talc) and provided a silky white and lustrous cosmetic powder) to hide redness , blotches and freckles.
The lips
For a shiny lips their applied a clear pomade. It helped to protect them from the elements. 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.
The blusher
In 19 century the pale skin was still the privileged class. For a contrast in the pale face they applied red beet juice or a carmine dye on the cheeks.
The brighter eyes
Ladies used a drop of lemon or orange juice in each eye for the bright eyes, and was considered a cleansing method. Poisonous belladonna was also dropped into the eyes for the pupils to dilate, creating a luminous glow, but clouding vision.
In Victorian era were popular to apply the red and black color eyeshadow, but very subtly and hardly visible. Eye paints was made of mixed lead tetroxide, mercuric sulphide, antimony, cinnabar, vermilion, and secret ingredients. Other way was to put beeswax on their lashes, then apply any number of black powders, from soot to crushed precious stones.
http://www.katetattersall.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Victorian-dressing.jpg
1850s two ''toilet tablets'', of rare wood and bound with brass, lined with lush velvet, both would likely have mirrors in the lids and amongst the various containers include scissors, tweezers, medicine spoons, corkscrews, bodkins, boot hooks, knives, &c. Here women hide their pastes, powders ant paints. Usually only the wealthy women could afford that toilet tablet chest. Some older ladies kept some charming bloom of youth.
Sources: http://www.katetattersall.com/?p=3735
http://victorianeracnr.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/history-of-victorian-corset.html
No comments:
Post a Comment