APPENDIX E Fashions
in Makeup

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One of the determining factors in any realistic makeup for the stage is the historical period to which the character belongs. This applies not only to the hairstyle but, in many cases, to the facial makeup as well. The kohl-lined eyes of the ancient Egyptians, the whitened faces of eighteenth-century ladies, the fashionably pale lips of the early 1960s—all must be taken into consideration in creating makeups for those periods.

The brief notes in this chapter are intended to give an overall view of the subject and to serve as a reference in doing period plays. Although hair styles are mentioned from time to time along with the makeup, more extensive information can be found in the more than 40 plates of hair-style drawings in Appendix F.

Ancient Peoples

Among the Egyptians, both men and women used makeup. The eyelids were frequently colored with green malachite and the eyes heavily lined and the eyebrows darkened with black kohl (powdered antimony sulfide). Carmine was used on the lips; for coloring the cheeks, red clay was mixed with saffron. Veins, especially on the bosom, were sometimes accented with blue. White lead was occasionally used for whitening the skin. Both men and women shaved their heads and wore wigs. The hair was usually dark brown, though at the height of Egyptian civilization it was sometimes dyed red, blue, or even green. Beards were often false and tied on with a ribbon or a strap; no attempt was made to make them look natural. Sometimes they were even made of gold or other metal.

The Assyrians and the Persians also dyed their hair and their beards, the Assyrians preferring black, the Persians, henna color. The eyes were lined with kohl, though not so heavily as those of the Egyptians. The brows, however, were often made very heavy and close together. Both natural hair and wigs were worn, and the hair was curled with tongs. On special occasions it was sometimes decorated with gold dust and intertwined with gold threads.

Upper-class Greek women sometimes painted their cheeks and lips rose or earthy red, whitened their faces, darkened their eyebrows, shadowed their eyelids, and, upon occasion, dyed their hair or wore wigs. Red hair was popular, and blue, it is reported, was not unknown. Fashionable Roman women and some men whitened their faces, rouged their cheeks and lips, darkened their eyebrows, and sometimes dyed their hair blond or red. During the period of the extremely elaborate and rapidly changing hair styles for women, wigs were frequently worn. Men sometimes wore wigs or painted on hair to cover their baldness. Both sexes wore beauty patches made of leather.

The Middle Ages

Upper-class Medieval women liked a pale complexion and in the late Middle Ages frequently used white lead to achieve it. Cheek and lip rouge were often used. In the thirteenth century, rouge was in general use among women; often rose or pink was worn by the upper classes and a cheaper brownish red by the lower. Fifteenth-century French women sometimes painted their cheeks and their lips with a crimson rouge. Throughout the Middle Ages, rouge seems usually to have been applied in a round spot with some attempt at blending. Various colors of eye-shadow were used to some extent in the Middle Ages, and the upper lid was sometimes lined with black. Eyebrows were natural until the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, when women of fashion (and in England, at least, even lower-class women) plucked their brows to a fine, arched line (FIGURE E-1). Sometimes, it seems, the eyebrows were shaved off completely. The hairline was also plucked so that little or no hair would show below the headdresses. The plucking was even done in public.

Both black and blond hair were fashionable, but red was not and would not be until Elizabeth I made it so.

The Sixteenth Century

The Renaissance brought a marked increase in the use of cosmetics but not, unfortunately, much improvement in the knowledge of how to make them safe for the skin. Frequently, irritating and poisonous artists’ pigments were used to paint the face as if it were a living canvas. The skin was whitened and the cheeks and lips rouged. In Love’s Labours Lost Byron says:

Your mistresses dare never come in rain. For fear their colours should be washed away.

Spanish wool and Spanish papers (wool or small leaves of paper containing powdered pigment) were popular for rouge (and sometimes for the white as well) and continued to be used for several centuries.

By the end of the sixteenth century the artificially high forehead for women was no longer in fashion. Women had stopped plucking their eyebrows to a thin line, and some of them had begun to spot their faces with black patches.

Although some men painted their faces, this was not looked upon with favor by either sex. Nonetheless, Henri III is said to have gone about the streets of Paris “made up like an old coquette,” his face plastered with white and red, his hair covered with perfumed violet powder.

Wigs were sometimes worn (both Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots had large numbers of them); false hair was used; and beards, as well as hair and wigs, were sometimes dyed. Elizabeth favored red hair and thus made it a popular color. White or tinted powder was sometimes used on the hair. Venetian women in particular sat for days in the sun bleaching their hair and, according to contemporary reports, occasionally suffered severe reactions from overexposure to the sun. Blond wigs were sometimes worn instead.

Elizabeth’s teeth, like so many people’s of the time were yellow, spotted, and rotting away.

The Seventeenth Century

Cosmetics were more widely used in the seventeenth century. Spanish papers in red and white were still in use. Samuel Pepys in his diary referred to his cousin, Mrs. Pierce, as being “still very pretty, but paints red on her face, which makes me hate her.” On the other hand, the Earl of Chesterfield wrote to his well-painted Miss Livingston: “Your complexion is none of those faint whites that represents a Venus in the green sickness, but such as Apollo favours and visits most.”

It is important to remember in doing Restoration plays that country girls still relied on their natural coloring but that ladies who wore makeup made no attempt to conceal the fact. Faces were usually whitened with powder or washes. Dark complexions were considered common.

Rouge worn by the upper classes was usually rose colored, whereas that used by lower-class women was an ochre red, often applied excessively.

Eyebrows were occasionally darkened, and a creme eyeshadow in blue, brown, or gray was sometimes worn by upper-class women. It was usually concentrated on the upper lid near the eye but might occasionally, in a burst of enthusiasm, be allowed to creep up towards the eyebrow.

Rouge, pink, or flesh powder, and sometimes a touch of lip rouge, were worn by men of fashion in the last decade of the century. Patches were worn by some fashionable men—whether or not they wore makeup—and in profusion by fashionable ladies. Some, according to Beaumont and Fletcher, were “cut like stars, some in half moons, some in lozenges.” There were other shapes as well. Their placement was not without significance—a patch close to the eye was called la passionée, one beside the mouth, la baiseuse, on the cheek, la gallante, and so on. Ladies were seldom content with one patch. According to John Bulwer, writing in 1650 in his Anthropometamorphosis, “Our ladies have lately entertained a vaine custom of spotting their faces out of an affectation of a mole, to set off their beauty, such as Venus had; and it is well if one black patch will serve to make their faces remarkable, for some fill their visages full of them, varied into all manner of shapes and figures.” Bulwer includes an illustration of a “visage full of them.” Eight years later, in Wit Restored, there appeared a few lines on the subject:

Their faces are besmear’d and pierc’d

With several sorts of patches.

As if some cats their skins had flead

With scarres, half moons, and notches.

The patches were usually made of black taffeta or Spanish leather (usually red) or sometimes of gummed paper. It was also suggested in Wit Restored that patches might be of some practical use in covering blemishes. It is reported, in fact, that the Duchess of Newcastle wore “many black patches because of pimples around her mouth.” Plumpers, made of balls of wax, were sometimes carried in the mouth by aging ladies to fill out their sunken cheeks.

The fashion of wigs for men was begun by Louis XIII; black wigs were popularized by Charles II. At the end of the century, light powder (mostly gray, beige, and tan, but not white) was used on the hair. Hairstyles even developed political significance for a time—whereas the Cavaliers wore their hair long, the Puritans cut theirs short and were called Roundheads. Beards and mustaches were carefully groomed with special combs and brushes and kept in shape with perfumed wax.

Teeth were still poorly cared for, and they often looked it.

The Eighteenth Century

Face painting and patching continued to flourish in the eighteenth century. In Wycherly’s Love in a Wood, published in 1735, Dapperwit, who is trying to arouse Miss Lucy, says to Ranger, “Pish, give her but leave to gape, rub her Eyes, and put on her Day-Pinner, the long Patch under the left Eye, awaken the Roses on her Cheeks with some Spanish Wool…. Doors fly off the Hinges, and she into my Arms.”

As for patches, a prominent marquise is reported to have appeared at a party wearing sixteen of them, one in the shape of a tree on which were perched two love birds. Sometimes the patches had political significance—Whigs patching on the right side and Tories on the left. Ladies who had not made up their minds patched on both sides.

Face painting became more garish in the second half of the eighteenth century. The ladies “enamelled” their faces with white lead and applied bright rouge heavily and with little subtlety. Horace Walpole, in writing of the coronation of George III, mentions that “lord Bolingbroke put on rouge upon his wife and the Duchess of Bedford in the Painted Chamber; the Duchess of Queensbury told me of the latter, that she looked like an orange-peach, half red, half yellow.”

In The Life of Lady Sarah Lennox, we read that a contemporary of Lady Caroline Mackenzie remarked that she wore “such quantities of white that she was terrible” and that the Duchess of Grafton “having left red and white quite off is one of the coarsest brown women I ever saw.” A guest at a party in 1764 was described as wearing on her face “rather too much yellow mixed with the red; she … would look very agreeable if she added blanc to the rouge instead of gamboge.”

The white paints, according to The Art of Beauty (written anonymously and published in 1825),

affect the eyes which swell and inflame and are rendered painful and watery. They change the texture of the skin, on which they produce pimples and cause rheums; attack the teeth, make them ache, destroy the enamel, and loosen them…. To the inconveniences we have just enumerated, we add this, of turning the skin black when it is exposed to the contact of sulphureous or phosphoric exhalations. Accordingly, those females who make use of them ought carefully to avoid going too near substances in a state of putrefaction, the vapours of sulphur … and the exhalation of bruised garlic.

The warnings about the white lead paints were hardly exaggerated. Walpole wrote in 1766 that the youthful and attractive Lady Fortrose was “at the point of death, killed like Lady Coventry and others, by white lead, of which nothing could break her.” At least they did not lose their lives through ignorance of the dangerous nature of their paints.

Despite the seemingly excessive makeup used by English ladies, they still lagged behind the French. Walpole reported that French princesses wore “their red of a deeper dye than other women, though all use it extravagantly.” Lady Sarah Lennox found the Princesse de Condé to be the only lady in Parisian society who did not “wear rouge, for all the rest daub themselves so horribly that it’s shocking.”

Casanova was of the opinion that the rouge, though excessive, had its attractions and that the charm of the ladies’ painted faces lay in the carelessness with which the rouge was applied, without the slightest attempt at naturalness.

The rouge was sometimes applied in a triangular pattern, sometimes more rounded. About 1786 hairdresser William Barker described French fashions in makeup:

From a little below the eye there is sometimes drawn a red streak to the lower temple and another streak in a semicircular form to the other line. If the eyebrows are not naturally dark, they make them so…. Sometimes the French ladies … put on rouge of the highest color in the form of a perfect circle, without shading it off at all.

But Mr. Barker added that Marie-Antoinette had introduced a more natural application of rouge. A red pomade was used on the lips as well. One recipe for lip pomade suggested that the lady might add some gold leaf if she wished.

But it was not only the women who used cosmetics. In 1754 a correspondent wrote to Connoisseur:

I am ashamed to tell you that we are indebted to Spanish Wool for many of our masculine ruddy complexions. A pretty fellow lacquers his pale face with as many varnishes as a fine lady…. I fear it will be found, upon examination, that most of our pretty fellows who lay on carmine are painting a rotten post.

Wigs were almost universally worn by men, much less frequently by women. Powdered hair was in fashion until near the end of the century. White powder was introduced in 1703; but tinted powder—gray, pink, blue, lavender, blond, brown—continued to be worn. Facial hair was never fashionable and rarely worn except, in some instances, by soldiers. Military hairstyles were strictly regulated.

The wigs and high headdresses and powdered hair passed, however, and with them the garish makeup. At the end of the century a more-or-less natural makeup was in vogue.

The Nineteenth Century

In the early years of the nineteenth century, fashionable cheeks were rouged. A portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, painted about 1803, shows the rose-colored rouge applied in a round pattern. The lips were also rose. But excessive rouging was not always looked upon with favor. The Countess of Granville wrote disapprovingly to her sister of ladies whose makeup she considered ill-bred: “Mrs. Ervington, dressed and rouged like an altar-piece but still beautiful … Miss Rodney, a very pretty girl, but with rather too much rouge and naivete … Lady Elizabeth Stuart by dint of rouge and an auburn wig looks only not pretty but nothing worse.” A Mrs. Bagot she described as being “rouged to the eyes.”

The Art of Beauty, published in 1825, noted that it was “not the present fashion to make so much use of red as was done some years ago; at least, it is applied with more art and taste. With very few exceptions, ladies have absolutely renounced that glaring, fiery red with which our antiquated dames formerly masked their faces.”

In Victorian England there was a reaction against any form of paint on the face, though creams and lotions and a little powder were acceptable. Makeup was used nonetheless, but so subtly (by “nice” women, that is) that it was often undetectable. A woman who would not dare buy rouge in a public shop was often not above rubbing her cheeks with a bit of red silk dipped in wine or trying some other homemade artifice.

As the Victorian influence became more pervasive, the use of cosmetics became more furtive, particularly in the United States. Despite the example of George Washington, who was perfumed and powdered along with other men of his class, sentiment against any use of cosmetics by men was becoming exceedingly strong—so much so, in fact, that the revelation that Martin Van Buren used such cosmetic aids as Corinthian Oil of Cream, Double Extract of Queen Victoria, and Concentrated Persian Essence helped to end his political career. But in other countries, essential items for the gentleman’s toilet included hair oil, dye for the hair and beard, perfumed chalk for sallow complexions, and a little rouge, which was to be used with great care so as to avoid detection. The use of cosmetics was revived to some extent in the 1860s, and it was reported that rouge was “extensively employed by ladies to brighten the complexion” and to give “the seeming bloom of health to the pallid or sallow cheek.” Eyebrows were dark, full, moderately thick, and attractively curved. The Empress Eugénie is believed to have introduced the use of mascara, and Charles Meyer, a German teenager trained in wigmaking, introduced Leichner’s theatrical makeup—the first greasepaint to be made in America. By the end of the century the shops were well supplied with fascinating and irresistible cosmetics. Not only did women not resist them, but they were known brazenly to repair their makeup in public. In 1895 the editor of the London Journal of Fashion wrote:

Rouge, discreetly put on, of course, forms a part of every toilet as worn by fashionable women, and some among these are beginning to use their toilet-powders somewhat too heavily. Even those who do not use rouge aim at producing a startling effect of contrast by making the lips vividly red and the face very pale, with copiously laid on powder or enamel—which when badly put on is of very bad effect, and, in point of fact, greatly ages a woman. Still, the entirely unaided face is becoming more and more rare, almost everybody uses other makeup effects, if not rouge, and an almost scarlet lip-salve.

It should be particularly noted, in planning your own makeup for a Victorian woman, that well-bred young girls never used makeup, though they did pinch their cheeks occasionally. Married women might resort to a delicate rouge, very subtly applied so as to look like natural color, but they did not rouge their lips. They might, however, employ various methods of bringing the blood to the surface, such as biting; and they might soften the lips with cream. Lipstick was used mainly by actresses on stage and by courtesans. Victorian eyebrows were natural (FIGURE E-3).

Early in the century, wigs for women were fashionable. Black and blond were both popular colors. By the 1820s black was favored. The Art of Beauty included a recipe for “Grecian Water for Darkening the Hair,” which, the reader was warned, was not only dangerous to the skin, but might eventually turn the hair purple. In the second half of the century the preference was for brown or black hair, and dyes were freely used by both men and women—the men for their beards as well as their hair.

In 1878 Mrs. Haweis wrote that red hair was all the rage; and in 1895 the Journal of Fashion announced that “the coming season will be one of complexions out of boxes … and the new colour for the hair a yellow so deep as to verge on red. It is not pretty, it is not becoming, and it is somewhat fast-looking because manifestly unreal.”

The Twentieth Century

At the turn of the century, many women were using henna to turn their hair fashionably auburn. The purpose of makeup was still to enhance the natural beauty rather than to look frankly painted. Some women, including Queen Alexandra, tended to defeat their purpose by applying their makeup quite heavily, though the colors used were delicate. The English and the Americans lagged behind the French in the frank and open application of paint. In the second decade, the use of eyeshadow, eyebrow pencil, mascara, and lipstick became widespread.

In the early twenties, beauty experts in England and America were still advising natural-looking makeup, but it was a losing battle. In the mid-twenties, geranium or raspberry lips and a pale complexion were fashionable, and eyebrows were being plucked into a thin, hard line. In 1927 it was reported, with marked disapproval, that some women actually used eyeshadow. They were also lining their eyes with black and painting their lips cerise. By the end of the decade, heavily painted, bee-stung lips, plucked eyebrows, and short hair were the mark of the emancipated woman.

It was in the late twenties that sun-tanned faces became popular, and dark powders were made available for those who did not tan well or had no time to lie in the sun. Orange rouge and lipstick were in fashion, and the lips were overpainted with an exaggerated cupid’s bow. Beauty experts recommended that eyeshadow be applied close to the lashes, then blended out to elongate the eye. Brown was recommended for day use, blue for night. Rouge and lipstick also came in day and evening colors—light for day, dark for evening.

Early in the thirties, orange lipstick went out and raspberry came in. Even schoolgirls used makeup. Their older sisters bleached their hair platinum, and their mothers or even their grandmothers rinsed away their gray. Hollywood set the styles. For the first time in history women made their mouths larger—Joan Crawford style. The bee-stung lips were gone. Fingernails and toenails were painted various shades of red, gold, silver, green, blue, violet, and even, for a time, black. Polish had been used for some years previously, but it was either colorless or natural pink.

In the forties and fifties, extremes of artificial makeup subsided somewhat, though lips were still heavily painted. Rouge became less and less used and eventually was omitted entirely by fashionable women. Makeup bases in both water-soluble cake and cream form were available in a variety of shades, ranging from a pale pink to a deep tan, and were usually applied too heavily. Eye makeup was still more or less natural. Eyebrows were no longer plucked to a thin line, colored eyeshadow was used mostly for evening wear, and mascara and false eyelashes were intended to look natural.

In the early half of the sixties, however, the natural look was out. Makeup became as extreme as the hairstyles, with a shift of emphasis from the mouth to the eyes. Lips were not only pale (either unpainted or made up with a pale lipstick), they were, for awhile, even painted white. This fashion, like most others, began in Paris. Eye makeup became heavier and heavier, with colored eyeshadow generously applied for daytime wear and the eyes heavily lined with black in a modified Egyptian style. False eyelashes became thick and full, and sometimes several pairs were worn at once. It was a time for restless dissatisfaction and experimentation. White and various pale, often metallic, tints of eyeshadow were tried. Eyebrows were even whitened to try to focus attention on the eye itself, and extremely pale makeup bases were worn. The objective seemed to be great dark eyes staring out of a colorless blob. Hair was tinted, rinsed, dyed, teased, ironed, and wound on enormous rollers, which, during the daytime, were sometimes worn in public. Sometimes the hair was just left to hang (possibly a beatnik influence), framing a pale face with great black furry-lashed eyes.

The 1970s began with a flurry of artificiality—red eyelashes, green hair, colored polkadots around the eyes, doll-like makeup on the cheeks, heavy black eyelashes painted on the skin, eyebrows blocked out with makeup. No innovation seemed too bizarre. But reaction set in, and a greater naturalness in makeup took over. In 1972, however, severely plucked eyebrows were once again in fashion—sometimes no more than the thin line of the twenties. But rouge was natural, and lip color varied with the season. By 1974 the variations included stronger colors—both very bright and very dark—than had been worn for a number of years. In 1975 the tawny look was fashionable, with cheek coloring tending to be muted and lips either muted or bright and clear. Eyes were shadowed with such colors as Evergreen, Parsley, Walnut, Plum, or Heather and highlighted with tints like pink, lavender, or pale yellow. Eyebrows were light or medium.

In the latter part of 1976 there was a shift among some makeup artists towards pink and rose and plum. Among some women who continued to wear the brown tones, coral lips were popular, but others preferred the deeper, tawnier shades. Lips were outlined with makeup pencils, filled in with brushes, then covered with colored gloss. Eyeshadow colors were often tinged with silver, copper, or gold.

Makeup in 1977 was darker and stronger, with rich, dark reds ranging from brownish to plum. Eyes were shadowed with earth tones—browns, grays, muted greens—and lip coloring might be brownish, deep and rich, or bright and clear. Makeup for evening frequently glimmered with gold or silver.

The emphasis in 1978 was definitely away from the browns and corals and more towards burgundy, magenta, fuchsia, and bluish pinks. The fashionable look was less natural and more sophisticated, with bolder, brighter makeup—deeper eyeshadow colors, bright rouge instead of soft blushers, with even more gloss on the lips. Eye lining was less smudged but still softened with no hard lines. For evening, lighter foundations were worn with smoky, shadowed eyes, bright rouge, and bright, glossy lips.

Continuing the trend, makeup in 1979 was supposed to look like makeup, and a woman with sunset rose cheeks, spirited rhubarb lips, and honest amber eyelids (highlighted with pearlfrost pink) might merely be on her way to the supermarket.

The new decade began quietly, on the one hand, with natural-looking eyebrows, soft, opalescent colors, and no hard lines around the eyes. But on the other hand, there were startlingly pale-faced punk rockers with charcoal-smudged eye sockets and bleached blond or dyed black hair shellacked into fierce points and sprayed in streaks or spots with brilliant purple, green, or orange. For summer the tawny look was in fashion—gray-brown or olive green on the eyes and a brownish red on the mouth. This look continued into the fall, when colors were sometimes muted, sometimes exploding into a dazzling array of magentas, mauves, and fuchsias vying with coppery reds and oranges and eyes accented with blue, violet, or green mascara. The eyebrows, however, were still natural-looking.

In 1982 makeup tended to match the natural skin color, with no hard lines and, for a while, no strong, contrasting colors. In the fall, however, colors deepened, with tones of red, purple, and bronze. Cheek and lip coloring was subtle, but eye coloring was not. Two or three colors, including metallics, might be used on the eyes, along with heavy, slightly smudgy black lines surrounding them. Eyebrows were pale.

Emphasis on the eyes continued into 1983, with charcoal and black still surrounding the eye, but with less color. Eyebrows ranged from pale to very dark. Lip and cheek coloring remained generally subtle, often pale. In mid-year, however, the “assymetrical look” was in vogue. Various colors were applied casually to the eyelids, but not the same colors on both eyelids—nor, in fact, was the same foundation color used on both sides of the face. The effect was, predictably, bizarre. In more conservative makeup, emphasis on the eyes continued for a while but by the winter had become more natural-looking.

The natural look continued into 1984, with softer, paler tones intended to enhance one’s appearance rather than to attract attention. When strong color was used, it was likely to be on a single feature—usually the eyes or the lips.

In the spring of 1985 eyebrows were usually un-plucked but darkened a bit if they were light, the eyes accented with deep colors (black, gray, purple, blue, bronze), often with more than one color. Lips might be pink, purplish, bright red, or red-orange. Foundation colors were usually natural-looking, tending towards the warm tones, and the general intent seemed to be to look healthy rather than bizarre. However, the purples, which were fairly popular, tended to defeat this.

In 1986 popular colors, according to Vogue, were orange, metallic, and lavender, used separately or in various combinations—a bronze foundation, for example, with lavender on the eyelids, cheeks, and lips, or a pale foundation with bronze on the eyelids, cheeks, and lips. All-bronze makeups were also worn, with variations of brown and bronzy red around the eyes, as well as on the cheeks and lips. In the autumn, colors were warmer and more intense, and there was a greater variety of colors and fewer rules about their application. Metallic eyeshadows were available in gold, silver, and copper; and blushers, in bronzed pink, soft apricot, or coral. The objective for the final makeup was, it was said, to create a “natural” look.

In 1987 glittery, bronzy colors were out, and the new matte makeup featured a variety of tints as well as texture. Although the rose tints were popular, especially among the more conservative, yellow lips, pink eyeshadow, and brightly colored mascara could be seen on the more adventurous. Eyebrows were not only darkened but were sometimes brushed upward to make them fuller and slightly shaggy, with dark eyeshadows surrounding the eye. With this strong emphasis on eye makeup, cheek and lip makeup was fairly natural. But for the young and less conservative, the hair was sometimes boldly streaked with bright colors. And by the end of 1987 women were once again using compacts and powdering their faces in public.