Wigs were powdered with wheat flour, bone meal, white clay, or corn flour scented with aromatic oils like orange or lavender to cover the smell of the rancid fats used to glue down the wig’s hair.
Abundant, untouched eyebrows were a sign of purity in ancient Greece.
Unibrow was a sign of intelligence and beauty
For those who didn’t have abundant or dark eyebrows augmentation was an option.
Fake eyebrows made of horse hair, or augmented with antimony or soot in a pinch.
Petronius’s “ideal woman” had eyebrows that “almost met again close beside her eyes,” while the mistress of the writer Anacreon had eyebrows that “neither join nor sever”. The ideal, it seems, was actually a kind of blurred join in the middle: not two separate eyebrows, and not a monobrow either.
Fake beauty spots were popular in the 18th century courts of Europe-male and female.
Made of velvet, silk or taffeta.
Covered smallpox scars, scars from liberal use of lead based face powder
hearts, spades, clubs, even tableaus (an entire horse-drawn carriage-shaped patch has been documented).
Could wear up to a dozen patches
mistress of Louis XV, Madame Du Barry, created a crib sheet for mouche-decoding
A mouche on the cheek meant you were a flirt,
near the lower lip suggested you were discreet (but still wanted to let everyone know it).
Even private messages were sent via beauty mark.
In Spain, one suitor learned the status of his beloved’s relationship with another man by reading her face: a patch on her right temple let him know a break-up was on the horizon and she would soon be back on the market.
Patch boxes-example brainjunkpodcast.com show notes.
